The PLA is the world's largest military force, with a strength of approximately 2,285,000 personnel, 0.18% of the country's population. It is the fastest modernising military power in the world, with significant defense projection capabilities. Recently, it has been rapidly developing and commissioning new arsenals, with numerous technological advancements and breakthroughs,[3] it boasts the second largest defence budget in the world, although many authorities – including SIPRI and the U.S. Department of Defense – argue that China does not report its real level of military spending, which is allegedly much higher than the official budget.[4][5]

The PLA on 1 August 2017 marked the 90th year anniversary since its establishment, before the big anniversary it mounted its biggest parade yet and the first outside of Beijing, held in the Zhurihe Training Base in the Northern Theater Command (within the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region), the first time it had ever been done to mark PLA Day as past parades had already been on 1 October, National Day of the PRC.

During the Second Sino-Japanese War from 1937 to 1945, the Communist military forces were nominally integrated into the National Revolutionary Army of the Republic of China forming two main units known as the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army. During this time, these two military groups primarily employed guerrilla tactics, generally avoiding large-scale battles with the Japanese with some exceptions while at the same time consolidating their ground by absorbing nationalist troops and paramilitary forces behind Japanese lines into their forces, after the Japanese surrendered in 1945, the Communist Party merged the Eighth Route Army and New Fourth Army, renaming the new million-strong force the "People's Liberation Army". They eventually won the Chinese Civil War, establishing the People's Republic of China in 1949, the PLA then saw a huge reorganisation with the establishment of the Air Force leadership structure in November 1949 followed by the Navy leadership the following April. In 1950, the leadership structures of the artillery, armoured troops, air defence troops, public security forces, and worker–soldier militias were also established, the chemical warfare defence forces, the railroad forces, the communications forces, and the strategic forces, as well as other separate forces (like engineering and construction, logistics and medical services), were established later on, all these depended on the leadership of the Communist Party and the National People's Congress via the Central Military Commission (and until 1975 the National Defense Council).

Troops of the PLA entering Beijing at some unknown period of time in 1949 during the Chinese Civil War (between 1945 and 1949)

Chinese troops gathered on a T-34/85 or a Type 58 medium tank leaving North Korea in 1958, 5 years after the Korean War ended with an armistice (a ceasefire) in 1953. The banner in the background of the picture bears a slogan (in Chinese) which declares "The Friendship And Unity Of The North Korean And Chinese Peoples Are Always Steadfast And Strong!"

During the 1950s, the PLA with Soviet assistance began to transform itself from a peasant army into a modern one.[8] Part of this process was the reorganisation that created thirteen military regions in 1955, the PLA also contained many former National Revolutionary Army units and generals who had defected to the PLA. Ma Hongbin and his son Ma Dunjing (1906–1972) were the only two Muslim generals who led a Muslim unit, the 81st corps, to ever serve in the PLA. Han Youwen, a Salar Muslim general, also defected to the PLA. In November 1950, some units of the PLA under the name of the People's Volunteer Army intervened in the Korean War as United Nations forces under General Douglas MacArthur approached the Yalu River. Under the weight of this offensive, Chinese forces drove MacArthur's forces out of North Korea and captured Seoul, but were subsequently pushed back south of Pyongyang north of the 38th Parallel, the war also served as a catalyst for the rapid modernisation of the PLAAF. In 1962, the PLA ground force also fought India in the Sino-Indian War, achieving all objectives.

During the Sino-Soviet split, strained relations between China and Soviet Russia resulted in bloody border clashes and mutual backing of each other's enemies. China and Afghanistan had neutral relations with each other during the King's rule. When the pro-Soviet Afghan Communists seized power in Afghanistan in 1978, relations between China and the Afghan communists quickly turned hostile, the Afghan pro-Soviet communists supported China's enemies in Vietnam and blamed China for supporting Afghan anti-communist militants. China responded to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan by supporting the Afghan mujahideen and ramping up their military presence near Afghanistan in Xinjiang. China acquired military equipment from the United States to defend itself from Soviet attack.[9]

The People's Liberation Army Ground Force trained and supported the Afghan Mujahidin during the Soviet war in Afghanistan, moving its training camps for the mujahideen from Pakistan into China itself. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of anti-aircraft missiles, rocket launchers and machine guns were given to the Mujahidin by the Chinese. Chinese military advisors and army troops were also present with the Mujahidin during training.[10]

In the 1980s, China shrunk its military considerably to free up resources for economic development, resulting in the relative decline in resources devoted to the PLA. Following the PLA's suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, ideological correctness was temporarily revived as the dominant theme in Chinese military affairs. Reform and modernisation have today resumed their position as the PLA's primary objectives, although the armed forces' political loyalty to the CPC has remained a leading concern. Another area of concern to the political leadership was the PLA's involvement in civilian economic activities, these activities were thought to have impacted PLA readiness and has led the political leadership to attempt to divest the PLA from its non-military business interests.

Beginning in the 1980s, the PLA tried to transform itself from a land-based power centred on a vast ground force to a smaller, more mobile, high-tech one capable of mounting operations beyond its borders, the motivation for this was that a massive land invasion by Russia was no longer seen as a major threat, and the new threats to China are seen to be a declaration of independence by Taiwan, possibly with assistance from the United States, or a confrontation over the Spratly Islands. In 1985, under the leadership of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the CMC, the PLA changed from being constantly prepared to "hit early, strike hard and to fight a nuclear war" to developing the military in an era of peace. The PLA reoriented itself to modernization, improving its fighting ability, and to become a world-class force. Deng Xiaoping stressed that the PLA needed to focus more on quality rather than on quantity, the decision of the Chinese government in 1985 to reduce the size of the military by one million was completed by 1987. Staffing in military leadership was cut by about 50 percent, during the Ninth Five Year Plan (1996–2000) the PLA was reduced by a further 500,000. The PLA had also been expected to be reduced by another 200,000 by 2005, the PLA has focused on increasing mechanisation and informatization so as to be able to fight a high-intensity war.[11]

PLA in Beijing, 2007

Former CMC chairman Jiang Zemin in 1990 called on the military to "meet political standards, be militarily competent, have a good working style, adhere strictly to discipline, and provide vigorous logistic support" (Chinese: 部队要做到政治合格、军事过硬、作风优良、纪律严明、保障有力; pinyin: bùduì yào zuò dào zhèngzhì hégé, jūnshì guòyìng, zuòfēng yōuliáng, jìlǜ yánmíng, bǎozhàng yǒulì).[12] The 1991 Gulf War provided the Chinese leadership with a stark realisation that the PLA was an oversized, almost-obsolete force, the possibility of a militarised Japan has also been a continuous concern to the Chinese leadership since the late 1990s. In addition, China's military leadership has been reacting to and learning from the successes and failures of the American military during the Kosovo War, the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the Iraqi insurgency. All these lessons inspired China to transform the PLA from a military based on quantity to one based on quality. Chairman Jiang Zemin officially made a "Revolution in Military Affairs" (RMA) part of the official national military strategy in 1993 to modernise the Chinese armed forces. A goal of the RMA is to transform the PLA into a force capable of winning what it calls "local wars under high-tech conditions" rather than a massive, numbers-dominated ground-type war. Chinese military planners call for short decisive campaigns, limited in both their geographic scope and their political goals; in contrast to the past, more attention is given to reconnaissance, mobility, and deep reach. This new vision has shifted resources towards the navy and air force, the PLA is also actively preparing for space warfare and cyber-warfare.

For the past 10 to 20 years, the PLA has acquired some advanced weapons systems from Russia, including Sovremenny class destroyers, Sukhoi Su-27 and Sukhoi Su-30 aircraft, and Kilo-class diesel-electric submarines. It has also completed several new destroyers and frigates including 2 AAW Type 052C class guided missile destroyers; in addition, the PLAAF has designed its very own Chengdu J-10 fighter aircraft. The PLA launched the new Jin class nuclear submarines on 3 December 2004 capable of launching nuclear warheads that could strike targets across the Pacific Ocean.

In 2015, the PLA formed new units including the PLA Ground Force, the PLA Rocket Force and the PLA Strategic Support Force.[13]

The state military system upholds the principle of the CPC's absolute leadership over the armed forces, the party and the State jointly established the CMC that carries out the task of supreme military leadership over the armed forces. The 1954 Constitution stated that the State President directs the armed forces and made the State President the chairman of the Defense Commission, the Defense Commission is an advisory body and does not hold any actual power over the armed forces. On 28 September 1954, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party re-established the CMC as the commanding organ of the PLA, from that time onward, the current system of a joint system of party and state leadership of the military was established. The Central Committee of the Communist Party leads in all military affairs, the State President directs the state military forces and the development of the military forces which is managed by the State Council.

To ensure the absolute leadership of the Communist Party over the armed forces, every level of party committee in the military forces implements the principles of democratic centralism; in addition, division-level and higher units establish political commissars and political organisations, ensuring that the branch organisations are in line. These systems combined the party organisation with the military organisation to achieve the party's leadership and administrative leadership, this is seen as the key guarantee to the absolute leadership of the party over the military.

In October 2014 the PLA Daily reminded readers of the Gutian Congress, which stipulated the basic principle of the Party controlling the military, and called for vigilance as "[f]oreign hostile forces preach the nationalization and de-politicization of the military, attempting to muddle our minds and drag our military out from under the Party's flag."[19]

The leadership by the CPC is a fundamental principle of the Chinese military command system, the PLA reports not to the State Council but rather to two Central Military Commissions, one belonging to the state and one belonging to the party.

In practice, the two central military commissions usually do not contradict each other because their membership is usually identical. Often, the only difference in membership between the two occurs for a few months every five years, during the period between a party congress, when Party CMC membership changes, and the next ensuing National People's Congress, when the state CMC changes, the CMC carries out its responsibilities as authorised by the Constitution and National Defense Law.[20]

The leadership of each type of military force is under the leadership and management of the corresponding part of the Central Military Commission of the CPC Central Committee. Forces under each military branch or force such as the subordinate forces, academies and schools, scientific research and engineering institutions and logistical support organisations are also under the leadership of the CMC, this arrangement has been especially useful as China over the past several decades has moved increasingly towards military organisations composed of forces from more than one military branch. In September 1982, to meet the needs of modernisation and to improve co-ordination in the command of forces including multiple service branches and to strengthen unified command of the military, the CMC ordered the abolition of the leadership organisation of the various military branches. Today, the PLA has air force, navy and second artillery leadership organs.

In 1986, the People's Armed Forces Department, except in some border regions, was placed under the joint leadership of the PLA and the local authorities, although the local party organisations paid close attention to the People's Armed Forces Department, as a result of some practical problems, the CMC decided that from 1 April 1996, the People's Armed Forces Department would once again fall under the jurisdiction of the PLA.

In December 1982, the fifth National People's Congress revised the state constitution to state that the State Central Military Commission leads all the armed forces of the state, the chairman of the State CMC is chosen and removed by the full NPC while the other members are chosen by the NPC standing committee. However, the CMC of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party remained the party organisation that directly commands the military and all the other armed forces.

In actual practice, the party CMC, after consultation with the democratic parties, proposes the names of the State CMC members of the NPC so that these people after going through the legal processes can be elected by the NPC to the State Central Military Commission, that is to say, that the CMC of the Central Committee and the CMC of the State are one group and one organisation. However, looking at it organizationally, these two CMCs are subordinate to two different systems – the party system and the state system. Therefore, the armed forces are under the absolute leadership of the Communist Party and are also the armed forces of the state, this is a unique joint leadership system that reflects the origin of the PLA as the military branch of the Communist Party. It only became the national military when the People's Republic of China was established in 1949.

By convention, the chairman and vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission are civilian members of the Communist Party of China, but they are not necessarily the heads of the civilian government. Both Jiang Zemin and Deng Xiaoping retained the office of chairman even after relinquishing their other positions. All of the other members of the CMC are uniformed active military officials. Unlike other nations, the Minister of National Defense is not the head of the military, but is usually a vice-chairman of the CMC.

In 2012, to attempt to reduce corruption at the highest rungs of the leadership of the Chinese military, the commission banned the service of alcohol at military receptions.[21]

On 1 January 2016, The Central Military Commission (CMC) released a guideline[22] on deepening national defense and military reform, about a month after CMC Chairman Xi Jinping called for an overhaul of the military administration and command system at a key meeting.

On 11 January 2016, the PLA created a joint staff directly attached to the Central Military Commission (CMC), the highest leadership organization in the military, the previous four general headquarters of the PLA were disbanded and completely reformed. They were divided into 15 functional departments instead — a significant expansion from the domain of the General Office, which is now a single department within the Central Military Commission .

General Office (办公厅)

Joint Staff Department (联合参谋部)

Political Work Department (政治工作部)

Logistic Support Department (后勤保障部)

Equipment Development Department (装备发展部)

Training and Administration Department (训练管理部)

National Defense Mobilization Department (国防动员部)

Discipline Inspection Commission (纪律检查委员会)

Politics and Legal Affairs Commission (政法委员会)

Science and Technology Commission (科学技术委员会)

Office for Strategic Planning (战略规划办公室)

Office for Reform and Organizational Structure (改革和编制办公室)

Office for International Military Cooperation (国际军事合作办公室)

Audit Office (审计署)

Agency for Offices Administration (机关事务管理总局)

Included among the 15 departments are three commissions, the CMC Discipline Inspection Commission is charged with rooting out corruption.

Until 2016, China's territory was divided into seven military regions, but they were reorganized into five theater commands in early 2016, this reflects a change in their concept of operations from primarily ground-oriented to mobile and coordinated movement of all services.[23] The five new theatre commands are:

The military reforms have also introduced a major change in the areas of responsibilities. Rather than separately commanding their own troops, service branches are now primarily responsible for administrative tasks (like equipping and maintaining the troops), it is the theater commands now that have the command authority. This should, in theory, facilitate the implementation of joint operations across all service branches.[24]

Coordination with civilian national security groups such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is achieved primarily by the leading groups of the Communist Party of China. Particularly important are the leading groups on foreign affairs, which include those dealing with Taiwan.

The PLA encompasses five main service branches: the Ground Force, the Navy, the Air Force, the Rocket Force, and the Strategic Support Force. Following the 200,000 troop reduction announced in 2003, the total strength of the PLA has been reduced from 2.5 million to just under 2.3 million. Further reforms will see an additional 300,000 personnel reduction from its current strength of 2.28 million personnel. The reductions will come mainly from non-combat ground forces, which will allow more funds to be diverted to naval, air, and strategic missile forces, this shows China's shift from ground force prioritisation to emphasising air and naval power with high-tech equipment for offensive roles over disputed coastal territories.[25]

In recent years, the PLA has paid close attention to the performance of US forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as learning from the success of the US military in network-centric warfare, joint operations, C4ISR, and hi-techweaponry, the PLA is also studying unconventional tactics that could be used to exploit the vulnerabilities of a more technologically advanced enemy. This has been reflected in the two parallel guidelines for the PLA ground forces development. While speeding up the process of introducing new technology into the force and retiring the older equipment, the PLA has also placed an emphasis on asymmetric warfare, including exploring new methods of using existing equipment to defeat a technologically superior enemy.

The PLA has the world's largest ground force, currently totalling some 1.6 million personnel, or about 60 percent of the PLA's total manpower of 2.3 million. The ground forces are divided among the five theatre commands as named above; in times of crisis, the PLA Ground Force will be reinforced by numerous reserve and paramilitary units. The PLAGF reserve component has about 510,000 personnel divided into 30 infantry and 12 anti-aircraft artillery (AAA) divisions. Two amphibious mechanised divisions were also established in Nanjing and Guangzhou MR, at least 40 percent of PLA divisions and brigades are now mechanised or armoured, almost double the percentage before the troop reduction.

On 1 January 2016, as part of Military reforms, China created for the first time a separate headquarters for the ground forces.[27] China's ground forces have never had their own headquarters until now. Previously, the People's Liberation Army's Four General Departments served as the de facto army headquarters, functioning together as the equivalent of a joint staff, to which the navy, air force and the newly renamed Rocket Force would report.

The navy includes a 10,000 strong Marine Corps (organised into two brigades), a 26,000 strong Naval Air Force operating several hundred helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, plus a 25,000 strong Coastal Defense Force. As part of its overall programme of naval modernisation, the PLAN has been developing a blue water navy, the Navy also uses the CJ-10 naval cruise missile system, which made its first public appearance during late 2009.

The 398,000 strong People's Liberation Army Air Force is organised into five Theater Command Air Forces (TCAF) and 24 air divisions, the largest operational units within the Aviation Corps is the air division, which has 2 to 3 aviation regiments, each with 20 to 36 aircraft. The surface-to-air missile (SAM) Corps is organised into SAM divisions and brigades. There are also three airborne divisions manned by the PLAAF.

The People's Liberation Army Rocket Force is the main strategic missile force of the PLA, it controls China's nuclear and conventional strategic missiles. China's total nuclear arsenal size is estimated to be between 100 and 400 nuclear weapons, the PLARF has approximately 100,000 personnel and six ballistic missile divisions (missile corps bases). The six divisions are independently deployed in different theater commands and have a total of 15 to 20 missile brigades.

Founded on December 31, 2015 as part of the first wave of reforms of the PLA, the People's Liberation Army Strategic Support Force is the newest branch of the PLA. Initial announcements regarding the Strategic Support Force did not provide much detail, but Yang Yujun of the Chinese Ministry of Defense described it as a combination of all support forces. Additionally, commentators speculate that it will include high-tech operations forces such as space, cyberspace and electronic warfare operations units, independent of other branches of the military.[28] Another expert, Yin Zhuo, said that "the major mission of the PLA Strategic Support Force is to give support to the combat operations so that the PLA can gain regional advantages in the astronautic war, space war, network war and electromagnetic space war and ensure smooth operations."[29]

Technically, military service with the PLA is obligatory for all Chinese citizens. However, in practice, it is entirely voluntary; because of China's large population and of the large number of individuals who volunteer to join the regular armed forces, the authorities seldom enforce compulsory military service. All 18-year-old males have to register themselves with the government authorities, in a way similar to the Selective Service System of the United States,[30] the main exception to this system applies to potential university students (male and female), who must undergo military training (usually for the duration of one to four weeks) before or one year after the commencement of their courses.[citation needed]

Article 55 of the Constitution of the People's Republic of China prescribes conscription by stating: "It is a sacred duty of every citizen of the People's Republic of China to defend his or her motherland and resist invasion. It is an honoured obligation of the citizens of the People's Republic of China to perform military service and to join the militia forces."[31] As of 2010[update] the 1984 Military Service Law spells out the legal basis of conscription, describing military service as a duty for "all citizens without distinction of race... and religious creed". This law has not been amended since it came into effect. Conscription has only existed officially since the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949, and, theoretically, all Chinese citizens have had the duty of performing military service. Technically, those 18–22 years of age enter selective compulsory military service, with a 24-month service obligation, this includes 18–19 years of age for female high-school graduates who meet requirements for specific military jobs. Military service is normally performed in the regular armed forces, but the 1984 law does allow for conscription into the reserve forces. Residents of the Hong Kong and Macau SAR however, as of 1997 and 1999 are exempted from joining the military.

The Joint Staff Department carries out staff and operational functions for the PLA and had major responsibility for implementing military modernisation plans. Headed by chief of general staff, the department serves as the headquarters for the entire PLA and contained directorates for the five armed services: Ground Forces, Air Force, Navy, Strategic Force and Support Forces, the Joint Staff Department included functionally organised subdepartments for artillery, armoured units, engineering, operations, training, intelligence, mobilisation, surveying, communications, quartermaster services, and politics.

Navy Headquarters controlled the North Sea Fleet, East Sea Fleet, and South Sea Fleet. Air Force Headquarters generally exercised control through the commanders of the seven military regions. Nuclear forces were directly subordinate to the Joint Staff Department through the Strategic Forces commander and political commissar. Conventional main, regional, and militia units were controlled administratively by the military region commanders, but the Joint Staff Department in Beijing could assume direct operational control of any main-force unit at will. Thus, broadly speaking, the Joint Staff Department exercises operational control of the main forces, and the military region commanders controlled the regional forces and, indirectly, the militia, the post of principal intelligence official in the top leadership of the Chinese military has been taken up by a number of people of several generations, from Li Kenong in the 1950s to Xiong Guangkai in the late 1990s; and their public capacity has always been assistant to the deputy chief of staff or assistant to the chief of staff.

Ever since the CPC officially established the system of "major military regions" for its army in the 1950s, the intelligence agencies inside the Army have, after going through several major evolutions, developed into the present three major military intelligence setups:

The central level is composed of the Second and Third Departments under the Joint Staff Headquarters and the Liaison Department under the Political Work Department.

At the major military regions intelligence activities consist of the Second Bureau established at the same level as the Operation Department under the headquarters, and the Liaison Department established under the Political Work Department.

The third system includes a number of communications stations directly established in the garrison areas of all the major military regions by the Third Department of the Joint Staff Headquarters.

The Second Bureau under the headquarters and the Liaison Department under the Political Department of major military regions are only subjected to the "professional leadership" of their "counterpart" units under the Central Military Commission and are still considered the direct subordinate units of the major military region organizationally, those entities whose names include the word "institute", all research institutes under the charge of the Second and the Third Departments of the Joint Staff Headquarters, including other research organs inside the Army, are at least of the establishment size of the full regimental level. Among the deputy commanders of a major Theater command in China, there is always one who is assigned to take charge of intelligence work, and the intelligence agencies under his charge are directly affiliated to the headquarters and the political department of the military region.

The Conference on Strengthening Intelligence Work held from 3 September 1996 – 18 September 1996 at the Xishan Command Center of the Ministry of State Security and the General Staff Department. Chi Haotian delivered a report entitled "Strengthen Intelligence Work in a New International Environment To Serve the Cause of Socialist Construction." The report emphasised the need to strengthen the following four aspects of intelligence work:

Efforts must be made to strengthen understanding of the special nature and role of intelligence work, as well as understanding of the close relationship between strengthening intelligence work on the one hand, and of the Four Modernizations of the motherland, the reunification of the motherland, and opposition to hegemony and power politics on the other.

The United States and the West have all along been engaged in infiltration, intervention, sabotage, and intelligence gathering against China on the political, economic, military, and ideological fronts. The response must strengthen the struggle against their infiltration, intervention, sabotage, and intelligence gathering.

Consolidating intelligence departments and training a new generation of intelligence personnel who are politically reliable, honest and upright in their ways, and capable of mastering professional skills, the art of struggle, and advanced technologies.

Strengthening the work of organising intelligence in two international industrial, commercial, and financial ports—Hong Kong and Macau.

Although the four aspects emphasised by Chi Haotian appeared to be defensive measures, they were in fact both defensive and offensive in nature.

The Second Department of the Joint Staff Headquarters is responsible for collecting military intelligence. Activities include military attachés at Chinese embassies abroad, clandestine special agents sent to foreign countries to collect military information, and the analysis of information publicly published in foreign countries.

The Second Department oversees military human intelligence (HUMINT) collection, widely exploits open source (OSINT) materials, fuses HUMINT, signals intelligence (SIGINT), and imagery intelligence data, and disseminates finished intelligence products to the CMC and other consumers. Preliminary fusion is carried out by the Second Department's Analysis Bureau which mans the National Watch Center, the focal point for national-level indications and warning. In-depth analysis is carried out by regional bureaus, although traditionally the Second Department of the Joint Staff Department was responsible for military intelligence, it is beginning to increasingly focus on scientific and technological intelligence in the military field, following the example of Russian agencies in stepping up the work of collecting scientific and technological information.

The research institute under the Second Department of the Joint Staff Headquarters is publicly known as the Institute for International Strategic Studies; its internal classified publication "Foreign Military Trends" (《外军动态》, Wai Jun Dongtai) is published every 10 days and transmitted to units at the division level.

The Institute of International Relations was known in the 1950s as the School for Foreign Language Cadres of the Central Military Commission, with the current name being used since 1964, the training of intelligence personnel is one of several activities at the Institute. While all graduates of the Moscow Institute of International Relations were employed by the KGB, only some graduates of the Beijing Institute of International Relations are employed by the Ministry of State Security. The former Institute of International Relations, since been renamed the Foreign Affairs College, is under the administration of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and is not involved in secret intelligence work, the former Central Military Commission foreign language school had foreign faculty members who were either Communist Party sympathizers or were members of foreign communist parties. But the present Institute of International Relations does not hire foreign teachers, to avoid the danger that its students might be recognised when sent abroad as clandestine agents.

Those engaged in professional work in military academies under the Second Department of the Joint Staff Headquarters usually have a chance to go abroad, either for advanced studies or as military officers working in the military attaché's office of Chinese embassies in foreign countries. People working in the military attaché's office of embassies are usually engaged in collecting military information under the cover of "military diplomacy", as long as they refrain from directly subversive activities, they are considered as well-behaved "military diplomats".

Some bureaus under the Second Department which are responsible for espionage in different regions, of which the First Bureau is responsible for collecting information in the Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macau, and also in Taiwan. Agents are dispatched by the Second Department to companies and other local corporations to gain cover.

The "Autumn Orchid" intelligence group assigned to Hong Kong and Macau in the mid-1980s mostly operated in the mass media, political, industrial, commercial, and religious circles, as well as in universities and colleges, the "Autumn Orchid" intelligence group was mainly responsible for the following three tasks:

Finding out and keeping abreast of the political leanings of officials of the Hong Kong and Macau governments, as well as their views on major issues, through social contact with them and through information provided by them.

Keeping abreast of the developments of foreign governments' political organs in Hong Kong, as well as of foreign financial, industrial, and commercial organisations.

Finding out and having a good grasp of the local media's sources of information on political, military, economic, and other developments on the mainland, and deliberately releasing false political or military information to the media to test the outside response.

The "Autumn Orchid" intelligence group was awarded a Citation for Merit, Second Class, in December 1994, it was further awarded another Citation for Merit, Second Class, in 1997. Its current status is not publicly known, during the 2008 Chinese New Year celebration CCTV held for Chinese diplomatic establishments, the head of the Second Department of the Joint Headquarters was revealed for the first time to the public: the current head was Major General Yang Hui (杨晖)

The Third Department of the Joint Staff Department is responsible for monitoring the telecommunications of foreign armies and producing finished intelligence based on the military information collected.

The communications stations established by the Third Department of the Joint Staff Headquarters are not subject to the jurisdiction of the provincial military district and the major military region of where they are based. The communications stations are entirely the agencies of the Third Department of the Joint Staff Headquarters which have no affiliations to the provincial military district and the military region of where they are based, the personnel composition, budgets, and establishment of these communications stations are entirely under the jurisdiction of the Third Department of the General PLA General Staff Headquarters, and are not related at all with local troops.

China maintains the most extensive SIGINT network of all the countries in the Asia-Pacific region, as of the late 1990s, SIGINT systems included several dozen ground stations, half a dozen ships, truck-mounted systems, and airborne systems. Third Department headquarters is in the vicinity of the GSD First Department (Operations Department), AMS, and NDU complex in the hills northwest of the Summer Palace, as of the late 1990s, the Third Department was allegedly manned by approximately 20,000 personnel, with most of their linguists trained at the Luoyang Institute of Foreign Languages.

Ever since the 1950s, the Second and Third Departments of the Joint Staff Headquarters have established a number of institutions of secondary and higher learning for bringing up "special talents." The PLA Foreign Language Institute at Luoyang comes under the Third Department of the Joint Staff Department and is responsible for training foreign language officers for the monitoring of foreign military intelligence. The Institute was formed from the PLA "793" Foreign Language Institute, which moved from Zhangjiakou after the Cultural Revolution and split into two institutions at Luoyang and Nanjing.

Though the distribution order they received upon graduation indicated the "Joint Staff Headquarters", many of the graduates of these schools found themselves being sent to all parts of the country, including remote and uninhabited backward mountain areas, the reason is that the monitoring and control stations under the Third Department of the PLA General Staff Headquarters are scattered in every corner of the country.

The communications stations located in the Shenzhen base of the PLA Hong Kong Garrison started their work long ago; in normal times, these two communications stations report directly to the Central Military Commission and the Joint Staff Headquarters. Units responsible for co-ordination are the communications stations established in the garrison provinces of the military regions by the Third Department of the PLA General Staff Headquarters.

China's main SIGINT effort is in the Third Department of the Joint Staff Department of the Central Military Commission, with additional capabilities, primarily domestic, in the Ministry of State Security (MSS). SIGINT stations, therefore, are scattered through the country, for domestic as well as international interception. Prof. Desmond Ball, of the Australian National University, described the largest stations as the main Technical Department SIGINT net control station on the northwest outskirts of Beijing, and the large complex near Lake Kinghathu in the extreme northeast corner of China.

As opposed to other major powers, China focuses its SIGINT activities on its region rather than the world. Ball wrote, in the eighties, that China had several dozen SIGINT stations aimed at Russia, Japan, Taiwan, Southeast Asia and India, as well as internally. Of the stations apparently targeting Russia, there are sites at Jilemutu and Jixi in the northeast, and at Erlian and Hami near the Mongolian border. Two Russian-facing sites in Xinjiang, at Qitai and Korla may be operated jointly with resources from the US CIA's Office of SIGINT Operations, probably focused on missile and space activity. Other stations aimed at South and Southeast Asia are on a net controlled by Chengdu, Sichuan. There is a large facility at Dayi, and, according to Ball, "numerous" small posts along the Indian border. Other significant facilities are located near Shenyang, near Jinan and in Nanjing and Shanghai. Additional stations are in the Fujian and Guangdong military districts opposite Taiwan.

On Hainan Island, near Vietnam, there is a naval SIGINT facility that monitors the South China sea, and a ground station targeting US and Russian satellites. China also has ship and aircraft platforms in this area, under the South Sea Fleet headquarters at Zhanjiang immediately north of the island. Targeting here seems to have an ELINT as well as COMINT flavor. There are also truck-mounted mobile ground systems, as well as ship, aircraft, and limited satellite capability. There are at least 10 intelligence-gathering auxiliary vessels.

As of the late nineties, the Chinese did not appear to be trying to monitor the United States Pacific Command to the same extent as does Russia; in future, this had depended, in part, on the status of Taiwan.

The Fourth Department (ECM and Radar) of the Joint Staff Headquarters Department has the electronic intelligence (ELINT) portfolio within the PLA's SIGINT apparatus, this department is responsible for electronic countermeasures, requiring them to collect and maintain data bases on electronic signals. 25 ELINT receivers are the responsibility of the Southwest Institute of Electronic Equipment (SWIEE). Among the wide range of SWIEE ELINT products is a new KZ900 airborne ELINT pod, the GSD 54th Research Institute supports the ECM Department in development of digital ELINT signal processors to analyse parameters of radar pulses.

The Political Work Department maintains the CPC structure that exists at every level of the PLA, it is responsible for overseeing the political education, indoctrination and discipline that is a prerequisite for advancement within the PLA. The PWD controls the internal prison system of the PLA, the International Liaison Department of the Political Work Department is publicly known as the "China Association for International Friendly Contacts". The department prepares political and economic information for the reference of the Political Bureau, the department conducts ideological and political work on foreign armies, explaining China's policies, and disintegrate enemy armies by dampening their morale. It is also tasked with instigating rebellions and disloyalty within the Taiwan military and other foreign militaries.

The Liaison Office has dispatched agents to infiltrate Chinese-funded companies and private institutions in Hong Kong, their mission is counter-espionage, monitoring their own agents, and preventing and detecting foreign intelligence services buying off Chinese personnel.

China's special ground force is called PLASF (People's Liberation Army Special Operations Forces). It includes highly trained soldiers, a team of commander, assistant commander, sniper, spotter, machine-gun supporter, bomber, and a pair of assault group. China's counterterrorist unit is drawn from the police force rather than the military, the name changes frequently, but as of this writing, it is known as the Immediate Action Unit (IAU). The Chinese Army fields large number of special operations groups and would appear to have a vast pool of manpower to choose from. However, it is believed that any significant terrorist activity within Chinese borders would draw the attention of the IAU.

China has reportedly developed a force capable of carrying out long-range air-borne operations, long-range reconnaissance, and amphibious operations. Formed in China's Guangzhou military region and known by the nickname "Sword of Southern China", the force supposedly receives army, air force and naval training, including flight training, and is equipped with "hundreds of high-tech devices", including global-positioning satellite systems. All of the force's officers have completed military staff colleges, and 60 percent are said to have university degrees. Soldiers are reported to be cross-trained in various specialties, and training is supposed to encompass a range of operational environments, it is far from clear whether this unit is considered operational by the Chinese. It is also not clear how such a force would be employed, among the missions mentioned were "responding to contingencies in various regions" and "cooperating with other services in attacks on islands". According to the limited reporting, the organisation appears to be in a phase of testing and development and may constitute an experimental unit. While no size for the force has been revealed, there have been Chinese media claims that "over 4,000 soldiers of the force are all-weather and versatile fighters and parachutists who can fly airplanes and drive auto vehicles and motor boats".[citation needed]

The PLA has said of reports that its modernisation is dependent on sales of advanced technology from American allies "Some people have politicized China's normal commercial cooperation with foreign countries, smearing our reputation." These contributions include advanced European diesel engines for Chinese warships, military helicopter designs from Eurocopter, French anti-submarine sonars and helicopters,[33] Australian technology for the Houbei class missile boat,[34] and Israeli supplied American missile, laser and aircraft technology.[35]

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's data, China became the world's third largest exporter of major arms in 2010–14, an increase of 143 percent from the period 2005–2009.[36] China's share of global arms exports hence increased from 3 to 5 percent. China supplied major arms to 35 states in 2010–14. A significant percentage (just over 68 percent) of Chinese exports went to three countries: Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar. China also exported major arms to 18 African states. Examples of China's increasing global presence as an arms supplier in 2010–14 included deals with Venezuela for armoured vehicles and transport and trainer aircraft, with Algeria for three frigates, with Indonesia for the supply of hundreds of anti-ship missiles and with Nigeria for the supply of a number of unmanned combat aerial vehicles. Following rapid advances in its arms industry, China has become less dependent on arms imports, which decreased by 42 percent between 2005–2009 and 2010–14. Russia accounted for 61 percent of Chinese arms imports, followed by France with 16 percent and Ukraine with 13 per cent. Helicopters formed a major part of Russian and French deliveries, with the French designs produced under licence in China, over the years, China has struggled to design and produce effective engines for combat and transport vehicles. It continued to import large numbers of engines from Russia and Ukraine in 2010–14 for indigenously designed combat, advanced trainer and transport aircraft, and for naval ships, it also produced British-, French- and German-designed engines for combat aircraft, naval ships and armoured vehicles, mostly as part of agreements that have been in place for decades.[37]

There is a belief in the western military doctrines that the PLA have already begun engaging countries using cyber-warfare.[38][39] There has been a significant increase in the number of presumed Chinese military initiated cyber events from 1999 to the present day.[40]

Cyberwarfare has gained recognition as a valuable technique because it is an asymmetric technique that is a part of Chinese Information Operations, as is written by two PLAGF Colonels, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, "Methods that are not characterised by the use of the force of arms, nor by the use of military power, nor even by the presence of casualties and bloodshed, are just as likely to facilitate the successful realisation of the war's goals, if not more so.[41]

While China has long been suspected of cyber spying, on 24 May 2011 the PLA announced the existence of their cyber security squad.[42]

In February 2013, the media named "Comment Crew" as a hacker military faction for China's People's Liberation Army;[43] in May 2014, a Federal Grand Jury in the United States indicted five Unit 61398 officers on criminal charges related to cyber attacks on private companies.[44][45]

In 1955, China decided to proceed with a nuclear weapons program, the decision was made after the United States threatened the use of nuclear weapons against China should it take action against Quemoy and Matsu, coupled with the lack of interest of the Soviet Union for using its nuclear weapons in defence of China.

After their first nuclear test (China claims minimal Soviet assistance before 1960) on 16 October 1964, China was the first state to pledge no-first-use of nuclear weapons, on 1 July 1966, the Second Artillery Corps, as named by Premier Zhou Enlai, was formed. In 1967, China tested a fully functional hydrogen bomb, only 32 months after China had made its first fission device. China thus produced the shortest fission-to-fusion development known in history.

China became a major international arms exporter during the 1980s. Beijing joined the Middle East arms control talks, which began in July 1991 to establish global guidelines for conventional arms transfers, and later announced that it would no longer participate because of the US decision to sell 150 F-16A/B aircraft to Taiwan on 2 September 1992.

In 1996, China committed to provide assistance to unsafeguarded nuclear facilities. China attended the May 1997 meeting of the NPT Exporters (Zangger) Committee as an observer and became a full member in October 1997, the Zangger Committee is a group which meets to list items that should be subject to IAEA inspections if exported by countries, which have, as China has, signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. In September 1997, China issued detailed nuclear export control regulations. China began implementing regulations establishing controls over nuclear-related dual-use items in 1998. China also has decided not to engage in new nuclear co-operation with Iran (even under safeguards), and will complete existing co-operation, which is not of proliferation concern, within a relatively short period. Based on significant, tangible progress with China on nuclear nonproliferation, President Clinton in 1998 took steps to bring into force the 1985 US–China Agreement on Peaceful Nuclear Cooperation.

Beijing has deployed a modest ballistic missile force, including land and sea-based intermediate-range and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), it was estimated in 2007 that China has about 100–160 liquid fuelled ICBMs capable of striking the United States with approximately 100–150 IRBMs able to strike Russia or Eastern Europe, as well as several hundred tactical SRBMs with ranges between 300 and 600 km.[46] Currently, the Chinese nuclear stockpile is estimated to be between 50 and 75 land and sea based ICBM's.[47]

China's nuclear program follows a doctrine of minimal deterrence, which involves having the minimum force needed to deter an aggressor from launching a first strike, the current efforts of China appear to be aimed at maintaining a survivable nuclear force by, for example, using solid-fuelled ICBMs in silos rather than liquid-fuelled missiles. China's 2006 published deterrence policy states that they will "uphold the principles of counterattack in self-defense and limited development of nuclear weapons", but "has never entered, and will never enter into a nuclear arms race with any country", it goes on to describe that China will never undertake a first strike, or use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state or zone.[46] US strategists, however, suggest that the Chinese position may be ambiguous, and nuclear weapons may be used both to deter conventional strikes/invasions on the Chinese mainland, or as an international political tool – limiting the extent to which other nations can coerce China politically, an inherent, often inadvertent phenomenon in international relations as regards any state with nuclear capabilities.[48]

The PLA has deployed a number of space-based systems for military purposes, including the imagery intelligence satellite systems like the ZiYan series,[49] and the militarily designated JianBing series, synthetic aperture satellites (SAR) such as JianBing-5, BeiDou satellite navigation network, and secured communication satellites with FENGHUO-1.[50]

The PLA started the development of an anti-ballistic and anti-satellite system in the 1960s, code named Project 640, including ground based lasers and anti-satellite missiles, on 11 January, 2007, China conducted a successful test of an anti-satellite missile, with an SC-19 class KKV.[51] Its anti ballistic missile test was also successful.

Military spending in the People's Liberation Army has grown about 10 percent annually over the last 15 years,[53] the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI, estimated China's military expenditure for 2013 to $188.5 billion US.[54] China's military budget for 2014 according to IHS Jane's, a defence industry consulting and analysis company, will be $148 billion US,[55] which is the second largest in the world. The United States military budget for 2014 in comparison, is $574.9 billion US.,[56] which is down from a high of $664.3 billion US in 2012. According to SIPRI, China became the world's third largest exporter of major arms in 2010–14, an increase of 143 per cent from the period 2005–2009. China supplied major arms to 35 states in 2010–14. A significant percentage (just over 68 per cent) of Chinese exports went to three countries: Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar. China also exported major arms to 18 African states. Examples of China's increasing global presence as an arms supplier in 2010–14 included deals with Venezuela for armoured vehicles and transport and trainer aircraft, with Algeria for three frigates, with Indonesia for the supply of hundreds of anti-ship missiles and with Nigeria for the supply of a number of unmanned combat aerial vehicles. Following rapid advances in its arms industry, China has become less dependent on arms imports, which decreased by 42 per cent between 2005–2009 and 2010–14.[37]

China's rise in military spending come at a time when there are tensions along the South China Sea with territorial disputes involving the Philippines, Vietnam, and Taiwan, as well as escalating tensions between China and Japan involving the disputed Diaoyu (Chinese spelling) and Senkaku (Japanese spelling) islands.

Former-United States Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has urged China to be more transparent about its military capabilities and intentions and Chinese state media has agreed that there is a need to "communicate more often and more effectively" about the issue, they do not know if the intel is correct but they are risking it.[57][58] The International Institute for Strategic Studies in a 2011 report argued that if spending trends continue China will achieve military equality with the United States in 15–20 years.[59]

Until the mid-1990s the PLA had extensive commercial enterprise holdings in non-military areas, particularly real estate. Almost all of these holdings were supposedly spun off in the mid-1990s; in most cases, the management of the companies remained unchanged, with the PLA officers running the companies simply retiring from the PLA to run the newly formed private holding companies.[60]

The history of PLA involvement in commercial enterprises began in the 1950s and 1960s, because of the socialist state-owned system and from a desire for military self-sufficiency, the PLA created a network of enterprises such as farms, guest houses, and factories intended to financially support its own needs. One unintended side effect of the Deng-era economic reforms was that many of these enterprises became very profitable, for example, a military guest house intended for soldier recreation could be easily converted into a profitable hotel for civilian use. There were two main factors which increased PLA commercial involvement in the 1990s. One was that running profitable companies decreased the need for the state to fund the military from the government budget, the second was that in an environment where legal rules were unclear and political connections were important, PLA influence was very useful.[citation needed]

By the early 1990s party officials and high military officials were becoming increasingly alarmed at the military's commercial involvement for a number of reasons, the military's involvement in commerce was seen to adversely affect military readiness and spread corruption. Further, there was great concern that having an independent source of funding would lead to decreased loyalty to the party, the result of this was an effort to spin off the PLA's commercial enterprises into private companies managed by former PLA officers, and to reform military procurement from a system in which the PLA directly controls its sources of supply to a contracting system more akin to those of Western countries. The separation of the PLA from its commercial interests was largely complete by the year 2000, it was met with very little resistance, as the spinoff was arranged in such a way that few lost out.[60] The rapidly expanding CEFC China Energy, that bought a $9 billion stake in Russia's largest oil producer Rosneft,[61] is linked to the PLA.[62][63]

^The Standard, 5 March 2008, Volume 1, No. 134, Major jump in military spending, Alarm raised over cyber, space advance, the Pentagon said in a report. ... "The PLA is also exploring satellite jammers, kinetic-energy weapons, high-powered lasers, high-powered microwave weapons, particle-beam weapons, and electromagnetic pulse weapons for counterspace application", it said, adding it was not clear if the cyber intrusions were backed by the military.

^Fisher, Jr., Richard (29 June 2011). "PLA and U.S. Arms Racing in the Western Pacific". International Assessment and Strategy Center. Archived from the original on 31 January 2014. Retrieved 20 June 2012. It is also possible that during this decade the PLA Navy could deploy initial railgun and laser weapons. It is known that the PLA has invested heavily in both technologies.

^2007 Annual Report to Congress: Military Power of the People's Republic of China. p. 25.

Mandated by the FY2000 National Defense Authorization Act, this annual report discusses China's military and security strategies, technological advancements in its capabilities, military doctrine, and security issues in the Taiwan Strait.

1.
People's Liberation Army Ground Force
–
The Peoples Liberation Army Ground Force is the land-based service branch of the Peoples Liberation Army and it is the largest and oldest branch of the entire Chinese armed forces. The PLAGF can trace its lineage from 1927, however, it was not officially established until 1948, as of 2016, the PLAGF has a strength of 1,600,000 personnel making it the largest standing army in the world. In addition, the Peoples Liberation Army Ground Force has an estimated 510,000 strong reserve force, the PLA ground forces consisted of conventionally armed main and regional units, which in 1987 made up over 70 percent of the PLA. It provided a good defense, but had only limited offensive potential and was poorly equipped for nuclear, biological. Regional forces consisted of 73 divisions of border defense and garrison troops plus 140 independent regiments, under the old system, a field army consisted of three partially motorized infantry divisions and two regiments of artillery and anti-aircraft artillery. Each field army division had over 12,000 personnel in three regiments, one artillery regiment, one armored regiment, and one anti-aircraft artillery battalion. Organization was flexible, the higher echelons being free to tailor forces for combat around any number of infantry divisions. The new, main-force group armies typically included 46,300 soldiers in up to four divisions, believed to include infantry, armor, artillery, air defense, airborne, the 13 armored divisions each had 3 regiments and 240 main battle tanks but lacked adequate mechanized infantry support. There was little evidence of the use of armored personnel carriers during the Sino-Vietnamese border conflict in 1979, artillery forces emphasized towed guns, howitzers, and truck-mounted multiple rocket launchers. In the 1980s some self-propelled artillery entered service, but the PLA also produced rocket launchers as a cheaper, there was a variety of construction equipment, mobile bridging, trucks, and prime movers. A new multiple rocket launcher for scattering antitank mines appeared in 1979, regional forces consisted of full-time PLA troops organized as independent divisions for garrison missions. Garrison divisions were static, artillery-heavy units deployed along the coastline, regional forces were armed less heavily than their main-force counterparts, and they were involved in training the militia. They were the PLA units commonly used to restore order during the Cultural Revolution, when chairman Mao proclaimed the Peoples Republic of China on October 1,1949, PLA ground force was 4.9 million-strong peasant army. After some time, demobilization of ill-trained and politically unreliable troops began, in 1987 the PLA ground forces, which relied upon obsolescent but serviceable equipment, were most anxious to improve defenses against armored vehicles and aircraft. Most equipment was produced from Soviet designs of the 1950s, but weapons were being incrementally upgraded, one example of upgraded, Soviet-design equipment was the Type 69 MBT, an improved version of the Type 59 MBT, itself based on the Soviet T-54. The Type 69 had improved armor, a gun stabilizer, a control system including a laser rangefinder, infrared searchlights. In 1987 the existence of a new, Type 80 MBT was revealed in the Western press, the tank had a new chassis, a 105 mm gun, and a fire control system. Production of the Type 80 had not yet begun, the PLA was believed to have atomic demolition munitions, and there were unconfirmed reports that it also had tactical nuclear weapons

2.
Republic of China Armed Forces
–
The Republic of China Armed Forces are the armed forces of Taiwan, encompassing the Army, Navy, Air Force and Military Police Force. It is an establishment, which accounted for 16. 8% of the central budget in the fiscal year of 2003. Since 2002, the military comes under the civilian control of the Ministry of National Defense. It was the National Revolutionary Army before being renamed as the Republic of China Armed Forces in 1947 due to the implementation of the Constitution of the Republic of China. Until the 1970s, the primary mission was to retake mainland China from the communist Peoples Republic of China through the Project National Glory. The Republic of China Armed Forces is the National Defense Force of Taiwan and it is known as Guojun 國軍, which means national army. When the ROC was based in mainland China, its army was the National Revolutionary Army before 1928 which was known as the Chinese Nationalist Army or KMT Army. The nationalization of the forces in 1947 basically detached the Kuomintangs control on the armed forces. Due to the control of the military and the constitution. The earliest use of the name Republic of China Armed Forces can be found in the Constitution of the Republic of China in the Beiyang Government in 1923, the Republic of Chinas army was the National Revolutionary Army, which was founded on mainland China in 1925. The National Revolutionary Army was the arm of Kuomintang from 1925 until 1947 in the Republic of China. It also become the army of the ROC during the KMTs period of party rule beginning in 1928. The army was nationalized and thus no longer belonged to the KMT, the ROC Armed Force relocated to Taiwan after 1949. The Land force was established in 1924 and it can be traced back to the establishment of the Whampoa Military Academy in Canton by Sun Yat-sen and built as National Revolutionary Army, the military arm of KMT. Whampoa Military Academy was relocated to Fengshan District, Kaohsiung City and it was re-established as the Republic of China Military Academy, and modeled after the United States Military Academy. The Navy of the Qing dynasty was first exposed to Western influence, with the establishment of the Republic of China in 1912, many former Qing-naval officer agreed with the revolutionary ideal of Xinhai and joined the ROC Navy. However, with continuing to plague the Republic of China. Furthermore, there were internal conflicts during its development, during the 2nd Sino-Japanese war, most of the ROC Navy was destroyed by the Imperial Japanese Navy

3.
Serve the People
–
Serve the People or Service for the People is a political slogan which first appeared in Mao-era China. It originates from the title of a speech by Mao Zedong, the slogan was also widely used in the United States by students and youth during the Asian American movement of the late 1960s and 1970s. The slogan was very popular due to the strong Maoist influence on the New Left, considerably amongst the Red Guard Party, the Black Panther Party, and the Yellow Brotherhood of West Los Angeles. Mao Zedong wrote this speech to commemorate the death of a PLA Soldier, Zhang Side, a participant in the Long March who died in the collapse of a kiln. In the speech he quoted a phrase written by the famous Han Dynasty historian Sima Qian, Though death befalls all men alike, it may be heavy as Mount Tai or light as a feather. Mao continued, To die for the people is weightier than Mount Tai, comrade Zhang Side died for the people, and his death is indeed weightier than Mount Tai. Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai was frequently seen wearing a pin emblazoned with the slogan Serve the People next to a portrait of Mao Zedong, although less often used in China today, the phrase still plays some important ceremonial roles. It is inscribed on the wall facing the front entrance of the Zhongnanhai compound, which houses the headquarters of the Central Peoples Government. During inspection of troops in the Peoples Liberation Army, the following exchange is carried out, Inspecting official, Greetings. Inspecting official, Comrades have worked hard, today, In some parts of the West, the slogan is often seen in fashion accessories like Mao-era style schoolbags. But for other countries, the slogan is a reminder of struggles with Maoist insurgencies, in 2007, actress Cameron Diaz caused a minor controversy by carrying a bag with the Serve the People slogan in Chinese on a tour of Peru. Peruvians, who were terrorized by the Shining Path Movement in the 1980s and early 1990s, writer Yan Lianke wrote a satirical novel set during the Cultural Revolution titled Serve the People about an affair between the wife of a military officer and a peasant soldier. Community service Public services Volunteerism Mao, Zedong, Serve the People, Serve the People Xinhua Net, PLA garrison in Hong Kong to continue using Serve the People

4.
Nanchang uprising
–
The Nanchang Uprising was the first major Kuomintang–Communist engagement of the Chinese Civil War, begun by the Communists to counter the anti-communist purges by the Nationalist Party of China. The Kuomintang established a Revolutionary Committee at Nanchang to plant the spark that was expected to ignite a widespread peasant uprising, deng Yanda, Song Qingling and Zhang Fakui were among the political leaders. Military forces in Nanchang under the leadership of He Long and Zhou Enlai rebelled in an attempt to control of the city after the end of the first Kuomintang-Communist alliance. Other important leaders in this event were Zhu De, Ye Ting, Communist forces successfully occupied Nanchang and escaped from the siege of Kuomintang forces by August 5, withdrawing to the Jinggang Mountains of western Jiangxi. August 1 was later regarded as the anniversary of the founding of the Peoples Liberation Army, in Chinese, apart from the name shown above, the event is known as August 1 Nanchang Uprising, August 1 Uprising, Nanchang Rebellion, Nanchang Insurrection, or Nanchang Mutiny. Communist forces at their peak during the Nanchang Uprising totaled over 20,000, the entire Communist force was organized into the 2nd Front Army, and over half of it was under He Longs command. He was also named Commander-in-Chief of the 2nd Front Army, and Ye Ting as deputy Commander-in-Chief, Communist representative was Zhou Enlai, chief of staff was Liu Bocheng and Director of the Political Directorate of the 2nd Front Army was Guo Moruo. The following is the order of battle for the Communist forces, 9th Army commanded by Zhou Enlai, with Zhu De as the deputy commander, 11th Army commanded by Ye Ting, with Cai Tingkai as the deputy commander and Nie Rongzhen as the party representative. On the morning of August 1,1927, at exactly 2,00 a. m. Zhou Enlai, He Long, Nie Rongzhen, Ye Ting, Ye Jianying, Lin Biao, Zhu De, Chen Yi and Liu Bocheng led their troops and attacked the city of Nanchang from different directions. Four hours later they took the city, capturing 5,000 small arms, around noon the Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Nationalist Party was established. Jung Chang claims that the operation led by Zhou Enlai was supervised by Soviet military advisors and their goal was to lead the troops to a coastal area in order to receive a supply of weapons from the Soviet Union. Facing a counterattack from the Nationalists, the Communists decided to retreat south towards the province of Guangdong, once there they would try to take over the city of Guangzhou while spreading their influence to the peasants and farms in that area. Guangzhou was the set by the Soviet Comintern and, on August 3. Their Little Long March came to an end at the beginning of October, as they came out of the Hakka uplands. In Chaozhou they were defeated by Nationalist-affiliated troops, the Communist forces had suffered such a decisive and disastrous defeat that only 1,000 soldiers remained as a complete unit, reforming into a regiment. Under the command of Zhu De and Chen Yi, who had faked their names, from this humble beginning the force eventually grew to 10,000 strong, traveling to Jiangxi and joining Mao Zedong at Jinggangshan in April 1928. Liu Bocheng became a fugitive but was enough to find other Communists who helped him and eventually sent him to the Soviet Union for military training

5.
People's Liberation Army Navy
–
The PLAN can trace its lineage to naval units fighting during the Chinese Civil War and was established in September 1950. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s the Soviet Union provided assistance to the PLAN in the form of advisers and export of equipment. Until the late 1980s, the PLAN was largely a riverine and this led to the development of the Peoples Liberation Army Navy into a green-water navy by 2009. Before the 1990s the PLAN had traditionally played a role to the Peoples Liberation Army Ground Force. In 2008, General Qian Lihua confirmed that China plans to operate a fleet of aircraft carriers in the near future. As of 2013 PLA officials have also outlined plans to operate in the first, Chinese strategists term the development of the PLAN from a green-water navy into a regional blue-water defensive and offensive navy. The PLAN traces its lineage to units of the Republic of China Navy who defected to the Peoples Liberation Army towards the end of the Chinese Civil War, in 1949, Mao Zedong asserted that to oppose imperialist aggression, we must build a powerful navy. During the Landing Operation on Hainan Island, the used wooden junks fitted with mountain guns as both transport and warships against the Republic of China Navy. The Naval Academy was set up at Dalian on 22 November 1949, the navy was established in September 1950 by consolidating regional naval forces under Joint Staff Department command in Jiangyan, now in Taizhou, Jiangsu province. It then consisted of a collection of ships and boats acquired from the Kuomintang forces. The Naval Air Force was added two years later, by 1954 an estimated 2,500 Soviet naval advisers were in China—possibly one adviser to every thirty Chinese naval personnel—and the Soviet Union began providing modern ships. In shipbuilding the Soviets first assisted the Chinese, then the Chinese copied Soviet designs without assistance, eventually Soviet assistance progressed to the point that a joint Sino-Soviet Pacific Ocean fleet was under discussion. Through the upheavals of the late 1950s and 1960s the Navy remained relatively undisturbed, under the leadership of Minister of National Defense Lin Biao, large investments were made in naval construction during the frugal years immediately after the Great Leap Forward. In the 1970s, when approximately 20 percent of the budget was allocated to naval forces. The Navy also began development of attack submarines and nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines. In the 1980s, under the leadership of Chief Naval Commander Liu Huaqing, Liu Huaqing was an Army Officer who spent most of his career in administrative positions involving science and technology. It was not until 1988 that the Peoples Liberation Army Navy was led by a Naval Officer, Liu was also very close to Deng Xiaoping as his modernization efforts were very much in keeping with Dengs national policies. While under his leadership Naval construction yards produced fewer ships than the 1970s, greater emphasis was placed on technology, in 1982 the navy conducted a successful test of an underwater-launched ballistic missile

6.
People's Liberation Army Air Force
–
The Peoples Liberation Army Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the Peoples Liberation Army, the armed forces of the Peoples Republic of China. The PLAAF was officially established on 11 November 1949, as of 2014, the PLAAF has a strength of around 398,000 personnel and is the largest air force in Asia. The PLAAF was founded with Soviet assistance on November 11,1949, the PLA had operated few aircraft before that. The PLAs first organized air unit, the Nanyuan Flying Group, was formed only in the summer of 1949 from about 40 ex-Nationalist aircraft, its task was to defend Beijing, the nations new capital. The PLAAF fought the Korean War in Soviet-built MiG-15, known as the J-2 in Chinese service, the war also brought Soviet assistance for the indigenous aircraft industry. The Shenyang Aircraft Factory built the two-seat MiG-15UTI trainer as the JJ-2 and this prepared them to mass-produce derivatives of Soviet aircraft under license, starting with the J-5 in 1956, then the J-6 in 1959, and then the J-7 in 1967. The 1960s were a time for the PLAAF. The withdrawal of Soviet aid due to the Sino-Soviet split, a recovery began around 1965 as J-2s, J-5s, and some J-6s were provided to North Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Development of the J-8, Chinas first indigenous fighter, was initiated during the 1960s. The PLA Air Force underwent reorganization and streamlining as part of the reduction in force begun in 1985, before the 1985 reorganization, the Air Force reportedly had four branches, air defense, ground attack, bombing, and independent air regiments. In war, control of the Air Force probably reverted to the regional commanders, in 1987 it was not clear how the reorganization and the incorporation of air support elements into the group armies affected air force organization. The largest Air Force organizational unit was the division, which consisted of 17,000 personnel in three regiments, a typical air defense regiment had three squadrons of three flights, each flight had three or four aircraft. The Air Force also had 220,000 air defense personnel who controlled about 100 surface-to-air missile sites, in addition, it had a large number of early-warning, ground-control-intercept, and air-base radars manned by specialized troops organized into at least twenty-two independent regiments. In the 1980s the Air Force made serious efforts to raise the educational level, superannuated pilots were retired or assigned to other duties. All new pilots were at least middle-school graduates, the time it took to train a qualified pilot capable of performing combat missions reportedly was reduced from four or five years to two years. Training emphasized raising technical and tactical skills in individual pilots and participation in combined-arms operations, in 1987 the Air Force had serious technological deficiencies — especially when compared with its principal threat, the Soviet Union — and had many needs that it could not satisfy. After the fall of the USSR, Russia became Chinas principal arms supplier to the effect that Chinese economic growth allowed Russia to sustain its aerospace industry. In the late 1980s, the mission of the PLAAF was the defense of the mainland

7.
People's Liberation Army Rocket Force
–
The Peoples Liberation Army Rocket Force, formerly the Second Artillery Corps, is the strategic and tactical missile forces of the Peoples Republic of China. The PLARF is a component part of the Peoples Liberation Army, the military arm was established on 1 July 1966 and made its first public appearance on 1 October 1984. The headquarters for operations is located at Qinghe, Beijing, the PLARF is under the direct command of the Chinese Central Military Commission. In total, China is estimated to be in possession of 260 nuclear warheads, with an number of them active. However, as of 2013, United States Intelligence estimates the Chinese active ICBM arsenal to range between 50 and 75 land and sea based missiles, the PLARF comprises approximately 100,000 personnel and six ballistic missile brigades. The six brigades are independently deployed in different military regions throughout the country, presently, It has 1,833 ballistic missiles &350 cruise missiles in its arsenal. The name was changed to the Peoples Liberation Army Rocket Force on 1 January 2016, several reports have suggested that the PLARF may control the whole triad of Chinas nuclear missiles, including sea-based ballistic missiles. In the late 1980s, China was the worlds third-largest nuclear power, possessing a small, beginning in the late 1970s, China deployed a full range of nuclear weapons and acquired a nuclear second-strike capability. The nuclear forces were operated by the 100, 000-person Strategic Missile Force, China began developing nuclear weapons in the late 1950s with substantial Soviet assistance. China made fast progress in the 1960s in developing nuclear weapons, deployment of the Dongfeng-1 conventionally armed short-range ballistic missile and the Dongfeng-2 medium-range ballistic missile occurred in the 1960s. The Dongfeng-3 intermediate-range ballistic missile was tested in 1969. Although the Cultural Revolution disrupted the strategic weapons program less than other scientific and educational sectors in China, gansu hosted a missile launching area. China destroyed 9 U-2 surveillance craft while two went missing when they attempted to spy on it, in the 1970s the nuclear weapons program saw the development of MRBM, IRBM and ICBMs and marked the beginning of a deterrent force. China continued MRBM deployment, began deploying the Dongfeng-3 IRBM and successfully tested and commenced deployment of the Dongfeng-4 limited-range ICBM, by 1980 China had overcome the slowdown in nuclear development caused by the Cultural Revolution and had successes in its strategic weapons program. In 1980 China successfully test launched its full-range ICBM, the Dongfeng-5, the missile flew from central China to the Western Pacific, the Dongfeng-5 possessed the capability to hit targets in the western Soviet Union and the United States. China also launched the Xia-class SSBN in 1981, and the year it conducted its first successful test launch of the CSS-NX-4 submarine-launched ballistic missile. In addition to the development of a sea-based nuclear force, China began considering the development of nuclear weapons. PLA exercises featured the use of tactical nuclear weapons in offensive and defensive situations beginning in 1982

8.
Central Military Commission (China)
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The State CMC is nominally considered the supreme military policy-making body and its chairman, elected by the National Peoples Congress, is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. In reality, command and control of the PLA, however, both commissions are identical in membership, thus actually forming one identical institution under two different names, in order to fit in both state government and party systems. Both commissions are currently chaired by Xi Jinping, who is the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China as well as Paramount leader, the 11-man commission issues directives relating to the PLA, including senior appointments, troop deployments and arms spending. CMC has control over 6.8 million personnel The CMC is housed in the Ministry of National Defense compound in western Beijing. The party military committee dates back to October 1925, and while operating under various degrees of authority and responsibility, was named the Central Military Affairs Commission. Among Western commentators, “Affairs” is frequently dropped from the title, as a commission, it ranks higher in the party hierarchy than departments such as the Organization or United Front Departments. In this period, the Committee was always chaired by Mao Zedong, in the September 1949 reorganization, military leadership was transferred to a government body, the Peoples Revolutionary Military Commission of the Central Peoples Government. As a consequence of the Cultural Revolution, the Party CMC became the sole military overseeing body, both the National Defense Commission and State CMC have been described as consultative bodies. Contrarily to the National Defense Commission, however, the Party and state CMCs are almost identical in leadership, composition, the Commission included the post of secretary-general until 1992. This post was held by Yang Shangkun, Huang Kecheng, Luo Ruiqing, Ye Jianying, Luo Ruiqing, Geng Biao, Yang Shangkun, Yang Baibing. In 2016, the 5 traditional departments were dissolved by order of Chairman Xi Jinping, unlike in most countries, the Central Military Commission is not considered as just another ministry. Although China does have a Ministry of National Defense, headed by a Minister of National Defense, the most important chain of command runs from the CMC to the four General Headquarters and, in turn, to each of the service branches. In addition, the CMC also has control over the Rocket Force, the National Defense University. The CMC shares command authority with the Ministry of Public Security of the State Council. The CMC is usually chaired by the General Secretary of the Communist Party, members of the CMC normally includes the Directors of the PLA’s Four Department and the Commander of the Ground Force, Air Force, Navy, and Rocket Force. The Chairman of the CMC was twice in its history held by an official who had given up his other posts, by Deng in the late 1980s. In the case of Deng Xiaoping, because of his prestige, he was able to exercise considerable power after his retirement, one major factor is that, in contrast to Deng Xiaoping, who always had close relations with the Peoples Liberation Army, Jiang had no military background. In addition, with the promotion of the generation of Chinese leaders to lead the civilian party

9.
Beijing
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Beijing is the capital of the Peoples Republic of China and the worlds third most populous city proper. It is also one of the worlds most populous capital cities, the city, located in northern China, is governed as a direct-controlled municipality under the national government with 16 urban, suburban, and rural districts. Beijing is the second largest Chinese city by population after Shanghai and is the nations political, cultural. It is home to the headquarters of most of Chinas largest state-owned companies, and is a hub for the national highway, expressway, railway. The citys history dates back three millennia, as the last of the Four Great Ancient Capitals of China, Beijing has been the political centre of the country for much of the past eight centuries. Beijing was the largest city in the world by population for much of the second millennium A. D, the city is renowned for its opulent palaces, temples, parks, gardens, tombs, walls and gates. Its art treasures and universities have made it centre of culture, encyclopædia Britannica notes that few cities in the world have served for so long as the political headquarters and cultural centre of an area as immense as China. Siheyuans, the traditional housing style, and hutongs, the narrow alleys between siheyuans, are major tourist attractions and are common in urban Beijing. The city hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics and was chosen to host the 2022 Winter Olympics, many of Beijings 91 universities consistently rank among the best in China, of which Peking University and Tsinghua University are ranked in the top 60 universities in the world. Beijings Zhongguancun area is known as Chinas Silicon Valley and Chinas center of innovation. According to the 2016 InterNations Expat Insider Survey, Beijing ranked first in Asia in the subcategory Personal Finance Index, expats live primarily in urban districts such as Dongcheng and Chaoyang in the east, or in suburban districts such as Shunyi. Over the past 3,000 years, the city of Beijing has had other names. The name Beijing, which means Northern Capital, was applied to the city in 1403 during the Ming Dynasty to distinguish the city from Nanjing, the English spelling is based on the pinyin romanisation of the two characters as they are pronounced in Standard Mandarin. Those dialects preserve the Middle Chinese pronunciation of 京 as kjaeng, the single Chinese character abbreviation for Beijing is 京, which appears on automobile license plates in the city. The official Latin alphabet abbreviation for Beijing is BJ, the earliest traces of human habitation in the Beijing municipality were found in the caves of Dragon Bone Hill near the village of Zhoukoudian in Fangshan District, where Peking Man lived. Homo erectus fossils from the date to 230,000 to 250,000 years ago. Paleolithic Homo sapiens also lived more recently, about 27,000 years ago. Archaeologists have found neolithic settlements throughout the municipality, including in Wangfujing, the first walled city in Beijing was Ji, a city from the 11th to 7th century BC

10.
Xi Jinping
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Xi Jinping is the current General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, President of the Peoples Republic of China, and Chairman of the Central Military Commission. As General Secretary, Xi holds a seat on the Politburo Standing Committee. The son of Communist veteran Xi Zhongxun, Xi Jinping rose through the ranks politically in Chinas coastal provinces, Xi was governor of Fujian from 1999 to 2002, and governor, then party secretary of neighboring Zhejiang province from 2002 to 2007. Following the dismissal of Chen Liangyu, Xi was transferred to Shanghai as party secretary for a period in 2007. Xi joined the Politburo Standing Committee and central secretariat in October 2007, Xi was vice-president from 2008 to 2013 and Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission from 2010 to 2012. Since assuming power, Xi has attempted to legitimize the authority of the Communist Party by introducing far-ranging measures to enforce party discipline and he initiated an unprecedented and far-reaching campaign against corruption, leading to the downfall of prominent incumbent and retired officials. Xi has also imposed further restrictions over civil society and ideological discourse, Xi Jinping was born in Beijing on 15 June 1953. After the founding of the Communist state in 1949, Xis father held a series of posts, including propaganda chief, vice-premier, Xis father is from Fuping County, Shaanxi, and Xi could further trace his patrilineal descent from Xiying in Dengzhou, Henan. He is the son of Xi Zhongxun and his wife Qi Xin. When Xi was age 10, his father was purged from the Party and sent to work in a factory in Luoyang, Henan. In May 1966, Xis secondary education was cut short by the Cultural Revolution, Xi was age 15 when his father was jailed in 1968 during the Cultural Revolution. Without the protection of his father, Xi was sent to work in Yanchuan County, Shaanxi and he later became the Party branch secretary of the production team, leaving that post in 1975. When asked about this experience later by Chinese state television, Xi recalled, and when the ideals of the Cultural Revolution could not be realised, it proved an illusion. From 1979 to 1982, Xi served as secretary for his fathers former subordinate Geng Biao and this gained Xi some military background. In 1985, as part of a Chinese delegation to study American agriculture, he visited the town of Muscatine and this trip, and his stay with an American family, has been considered influential in his views on the United States. Xi joined the Communist Youth League in 1971 and the Communist Party of China in 1974, in 1982, he was sent to Zhengding County in Hebei as deputy Party Secretary of Zhengding County. He was promoted in 1983 to Secretary, becoming the top official of the county, Xi subsequently served in four provinces during his regional political career, Hebei, Fujian, Zhejiang, and Shanghai. Xi held posts in the Fuzhou Municipal Party Committee and became the president of the Party School in Fuzhou in 1990, in 1997, Xi was named an alternate member of the 15th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

11.
Fan Changlong
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Fan Changlong is a general in the Peoples Liberation Army of the Peoples Republic of China. He is a Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission, Fan was born in Dandong, Liaoning Province. He joined the PLA and the Communist Party of China in 1969 and he became a major general in 1995, a lieutenant general in 2002, and general on July 15,2008. Fan has been a member of the 16th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. In 2012, ahead of the 18th Party Congress, he was appointed Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission. In mid-April 2016, he paid a visit to the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, according to the country’s Ministry of National Defense, gen. Fan Changlong was said to have been the highest-ranking People’s Liberation Army officer ever to visit the Spratly Islands

12.
Chang Wanquan
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Chang Wanquan is the Minister of Defense and State Councilor of the Peoples Republic of China and a general in the Peoples Liberation Army. He has been a member of the Central Military Commission of the Peoples Republic of China, born in Nanyang, Henan Province, in 1949, Chang joined the PLA in March 1968 and the Communist Party of China in November of the same year. From January 2002 to December 2004, he was the chief of staff, from December 2004 to September 2007, he was the commander of the Shenyang Military Region. He was also director of the Equipment Development Department, in October 2007 he was elected as a member of the Central Military Commission. He attained the rank of colonel in 1992, major general in July 1997, lieutenant general in 2003. He has been a member of the 16th, 17th and 18th Central Committees, in October 2012, he was appointed Minister of National Defense, succeeding General Liang Guanglie. At the first plenary session of the 12th National Peoples Congress, he was also elected as State Councilor

13.
United States dollar
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The United States dollar is the official currency of the United States and its insular territories per the United States Constitution. It is divided into 100 smaller cent units, the circulating paper money consists of Federal Reserve Notes that are denominated in United States dollars. The U. S. dollar was originally commodity money of silver as enacted by the Coinage Act of 1792 which determined the dollar to be 371 4/16 grain pure or 416 grain standard silver, the currency most used in international transactions, it is the worlds primary reserve currency. Several countries use it as their currency, and in many others it is the de facto currency. Besides the United States, it is used as the sole currency in two British Overseas Territories in the Caribbean, the British Virgin Islands and Turks and Caicos Islands. A few countries use the Federal Reserve Notes for paper money, while the country mints its own coins, or also accepts U. S. coins that can be used as payment in U. S. dollars. After Nixon shock of 1971, USD became fiat currency, Article I, Section 8 of the U. S. Constitution provides that the Congress has the power To coin money, laws implementing this power are currently codified at 31 U. S. C. Section 5112 prescribes the forms in which the United States dollars should be issued and these coins are both designated in Section 5112 as legal tender in payment of debts. The Sacagawea dollar is one example of the copper alloy dollar, the pure silver dollar is known as the American Silver Eagle. Section 5112 also provides for the minting and issuance of other coins and these other coins are more fully described in Coins of the United States dollar. The Constitution provides that a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and that provision of the Constitution is made specific by Section 331 of Title 31 of the United States Code. The sums of money reported in the Statements are currently being expressed in U. S. dollars, the U. S. dollar may therefore be described as the unit of account of the United States. The word dollar is one of the words in the first paragraph of Section 9 of Article I of the Constitution, there, dollars is a reference to the Spanish milled dollar, a coin that had a monetary value of 8 Spanish units of currency, or reales. In 1792 the U. S. Congress passed a Coinage Act, Section 20 of the act provided, That the money of account of the United States shall be expressed in dollars, or units. And that all accounts in the offices and all proceedings in the courts of the United States shall be kept and had in conformity to this regulation. In other words, this act designated the United States dollar as the unit of currency of the United States, unlike the Spanish milled dollar the U. S. dollar is based upon a decimal system of values. Both one-dollar coins and notes are produced today, although the form is significantly more common

14.
History of the People's Liberation Army
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China has a long military tradition, dating back to the earliest days of recorded history. The martial exploits of kings and emperors, loyal generals and peasant rebels, throughout the centuries, two tendencies have influenced the role of the military in national life, one in peacetime and the other in times of upheaval. In times of peace and stability, military forces were subordinated to civilian control. The military was strong enough to overcome domestic rebellions and foreign invasion, in times of disorder, however, new military leaders and organizations arose to challenge the old system, resulting in the militarization of political life. When one of leaders became strong enough, he established a new political order ruling all China. After consolidating power, the new ruler or his successors subordinated the military to control once again. Since the beginning of the 20th century, all three tendencies have been discernible in the role of the military in national life, First, military modernization required both the strengthening of party control over the military and the continued disengagement of the armed forces from politics. These steps were necessary to ensure that a politically reliable yet professionally competent military would concentrate on the task of military reform, Second, defense modernization attempted to achieve improved combat effectiveness through organizational, doctrinal, training, educational, and personnel reforms. These reforms emphasized the development of combat capabilities in waging combined arms warfare, Third, military modernization was aimed at the transformation of the defense establishment into a system capable of independently sustaining modern military forces. This transformation necessitated the reorganization and closer integration of civilian and military science and industry, since the 1960s, China had considered the Soviet Union the principal threat to its security, lesser threats were posed by long-standing border disputes with Vietnam and India. Chinas territorial claims and economic interests made the South China Sea an area of importance to China. The scope of military cooperation has evolved gradually. In the 1950s, China dealt only with communist nations and insurgencies, in the 1960s, it began to provide military assistance to Third World nations to counteract Soviet and United States influence. Chinese military contacts with foreign countries expanded rapidly with the introduction of the modernization program. In the late 1980s, Peoples Liberation Army forces consisted of the arms like Ground forces, and the Air Force, Navy. The ground forces were divided into group armies, Ground force equipment was largely of Soviet design and obsolete, although some weaponry had been upgraded with foreign technology. The Air Force had serious technological deficiencies despite incremental improvements of aircraft, the Navy was developing a blue-water capability and sea-based strategic forces. China possessed a small but relatively credible nuclear deterrent force with an incipient second-strike capability, paramilitary forces consisted of the militia, reserve service system, Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, and Peoples Armed Police Force

15.
Modernization of the People's Liberation Army
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The military modernization program of the Peoples Liberation Army which began in the late 1970s had three major focuses. Second, modernization required the reform of military organization, doctrine, education and training, reforms in education and training emphasized improving the military skills and raising the education levels of officers and troops and conducting combined-arms operations. The third focus of military modernization was the transformation of the establishment into a system capable of independently maintaining a modern military force. Foreign technology was used selectively to upgrade weapons, Defense industry reforms also resulted in Chinas entry into the international arms market and the increased production of civilian goods by defense industries. Currently, China focus on weapon designs and manufacturing, while still importing certain military products from Russia such as jet engines. China decided to become independent in its sector and become competitive in global arms markets, its defense sector is rapidly developing and maturing. Where indigenous capability still falls short, China procures from Russia and, until local industry eventually bridges the gap, Chinas 2015 Defense White Paper called for independent innovation and the sustainable development of advanced weaponry and equipment. According to The National Interest, Chinese industry can learn much from Russia. The vibrancy of China’s tech sector suggests that Chinese military technology will leap ahead of Russian tech in the next decade, lines between civilian and military leadership and institutions in China have been indistinct. All high-ranking military leaders have high-level party positions, and many high-ranking party officials have some military experience, in general, in times where there was national leadership consensus on national policy, such as in the 1950s, the PLA was politically quiescent. Once the PLA was drawn into politics during the Cultural Revolution. As long as the leadership remained divided on a number of policy issues. When Deng Xiaoping was rehabilitated in 1977, however, the stage was set for the withdrawal of the military from politics and a partial return to the PLAs previous political passivity. Deng Xiaopings efforts in the 1980s to reduce the role of the military stemmed from his desire to reassert civilian control over the military. To accomplish his objectives, Deng revitalized the party apparatus and leadership. He also established personal control over the military through personnel changes, and he reduced the scope of the PLAs domestic political, economic, finally, he strengthened party control over the military through institutional reforms and political and ideological education. Occasional replacement of military region and military commanders also strengthened Dengs hand. Military leaders who objected to Dengs policies were replaced with more amenable personnel, the civilianization of several PLA corps and internal security units reduced the size of the PLA and the scope of its involvement in civilian affairs

16.
Simplified Chinese characters
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Simplified Chinese characters are standardized Chinese characters prescribed in the Table of General Standard Chinese Characters for use in mainland China. Along with traditional Chinese characters, it is one of the two character sets of the contemporary Chinese written language. The government of the Peoples Republic of China in mainland China has promoted them for use in printing since the 1950s and 1960s in an attempt to increase literacy and they are officially used in the Peoples Republic of China and Singapore. Traditional Chinese characters are used in Hong Kong, Macau. Overseas Chinese communities generally tend to use traditional characters, Simplified Chinese characters may be referred to by their official name above or colloquially. Strictly, the latter refers to simplifications of character structure or body, character forms that have existed for thousands of years alongside regular, Simplified character forms were created by decreasing the number of strokes and simplifying the forms of a sizable proportion of traditional Chinese characters. Some simplifications were based on popular cursive forms embodying graphic or phonetic simplifications of the traditional forms, some characters were simplified by applying regular rules, for example, by replacing all occurrences of a certain component with a simplified version of the component. Variant characters with the pronunciation and identical meaning were reduced to a single standardized character. Finally, many characters were left untouched by simplification, and are identical between the traditional and simplified Chinese orthographies. Some simplified characters are very dissimilar to and unpredictably different from traditional characters and this often leads opponents not well-versed in the method of simplification to conclude that the overall process of character simplification is also arbitrary. In reality, the methods and rules of simplification are few, on the other hand, proponents of simplification often flaunt a few choice simplified characters as ingenious inventions, when in fact these have existed for hundreds of years as ancient variants. However, the Chinese government never officially dropped its goal of further simplification in the future, in August 2009, the PRC began collecting public comments for a modified list of simplified characters. The new Table of General Standard Chinese Characters consisting of 8,105 characters was promulgated by the State Council of the Peoples Republic of China on June 5,2013, cursive written text almost always includes character simplification. Simplified forms used in print have always existed, they date back to as early as the Qin dynasty, One of the earliest proponents of character simplification was Lubi Kui, who proposed in 1909 that simplified characters should be used in education. In the years following the May Fourth Movement in 1919, many anti-imperialist Chinese intellectuals sought ways to modernise China, Traditional culture and values such as Confucianism were challenged. Soon, people in the Movement started to cite the traditional Chinese writing system as an obstacle in modernising China and it was suggested that the Chinese writing system should be either simplified or completely abolished. Fu Sinian, a leader of the May Fourth Movement, called Chinese characters the writing of ox-demons, lu Xun, a renowned Chinese author in the 20th century, stated that, If Chinese characters are not destroyed, then China will die. Recent commentators have claimed that Chinese characters were blamed for the problems in China during that time

17.
Traditional Chinese characters
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Traditional Chinese characters are Chinese characters in any character set that does not contain newly created characters or character substitutions performed after 1946. They are most commonly the characters in the character sets of Taiwan, of Hong Kong. Currently, a number of overseas Chinese online newspapers allow users to switch between both sets. In contrast, simplified Chinese characters are used in mainland China, Singapore, the debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters has been a long-running issue among Chinese communities. Although simplified characters are taught and endorsed by the government of Mainland China, Traditional characters are used informally in regions in China primarily in handwriting and also used for inscriptions and religious text. They are often retained in logos or graphics to evoke yesteryear, nonetheless, the vast majority of media and communications in China is dominated by simplified characters. Taiwan has never adopted Simplified Chinese characters since it is ruled by the Republic of China, the use of simplified characters in official documents is even prohibited by the government in Taiwan. Simplified characters are not well understood in general, although some stroke simplifications that have incorporated into Simplified Chinese are in common use in handwriting. For example, while the name of Taiwan is written as 臺灣, similarly, in Hong Kong and Macau, Traditional Chinese has been the legal written form since colonial times. In recent years, because of the influx of mainland Chinese tourists, today, even government websites use simplified Chinese, as they answer to the Beijing government. This has led to concerns by residents to protect their local heritage. In Southeast Asia, the Chinese Filipino community continues to be one of the most conservative regarding simplification, while major public universities are teaching simplified characters, many well-established Chinese schools still use traditional characters. Publications like the Chinese Commercial News, World News, and United Daily News still use traditional characters, on the other hand, the Philippine Chinese Daily uses simplified. Aside from local newspapers, magazines from Hong Kong, such as the Yazhou Zhoukan, are found in some bookstores. In case of film or television subtitles on DVD, the Chinese dub that is used in Philippines is the same as the one used in Taiwan and this is because the DVDs belongs to DVD Region Code 3. Hence, most of the subtitles are in Traditional Characters, overseas Chinese in the United States have long used traditional characters. A major influx of Chinese immigrants to the United States occurred during the half of the 19th century. Therefore, the majority of Chinese language signage in the United States, including street signs, Traditional Chinese characters are called several different names within the Chinese-speaking world

18.
Standard Chinese
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Its pronunciation is based on the Beijing dialect, its vocabulary on the Mandarin dialects, and its grammar is based on written vernacular Chinese. Like other varieties of Chinese, Standard Chinese is a language with topic-prominent organization. It has more initial consonants but fewer vowels, final consonants, Standard Chinese is an analytic language, though with many compound words. There exist two standardised forms of the language, namely Putonghua in Mainland China and Guoyu in Taiwan, aside from a number of differences in pronunciation and vocabulary, Putonghua is written using simplified Chinese characters, while Guoyu is written using traditional Chinese characters. There are many characters that are identical between the two systems, in English, the governments of China and Hong Kong use Putonghua, Putonghua Chinese, Mandarin Chinese, and Mandarin, while those of Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia, use Mandarin. The name Putonghua also has a long, albeit unofficial, history and it was used as early as 1906 in writings by Zhu Wenxiong to differentiate a modern, standard Chinese from classical Chinese and other varieties of Chinese. For some linguists of the early 20th century, the Putonghua, or common tongue/speech, was different from the Guoyu. The former was a prestige variety, while the latter was the legal standard. Based on common understandings of the time, the two were, in fact, different, Guoyu was understood as formal vernacular Chinese, which is close to classical Chinese. By contrast, Putonghua was called the speech of the modern man. The use of the term Putonghua by left-leaning intellectuals such as Qu Qiubai, prior to this, the government used both terms interchangeably. In Taiwan, Guoyu continues to be the term for Standard Chinese. The term Putonghua, on the contrary, implies nothing more than the notion of a lingua franca, Huayu, or language of the Chinese nation, originally simply meant Chinese language, and was used in overseas communities to contrast Chinese with foreign languages. Over time, the desire to standardise the variety of Chinese spoken in these communities led to the adoption of the name Huayu to refer to Mandarin and it also incorporates the notion that Mandarin is usually not the national or common language of the areas in which overseas Chinese live. The term Mandarin is a translation of Guānhuà, which referred to the lingua franca of the late Chinese empire, in English, Mandarin may refer to the standard language, the dialect group as a whole, or to historic forms such as the late Imperial lingua franca. The name Modern Standard Mandarin is sometimes used by linguists who wish to distinguish the current state of the language from other northern. Chinese has long had considerable variation, hence prestige dialects have always existed. Confucius, for example, used yǎyán rather than colloquial regional dialects, rime books, which were written since the Northern and Southern dynasties, may also have reflected one or more systems of standard pronunciation during those times

19.
Pinyin
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Pinyin, or Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan. It is often used to teach Standard Chinese, which is written using Chinese characters. The system includes four diacritics denoting tones, Pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written with the Latin alphabet, and also in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters. The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by many linguists, including Zhou Youguang and it was published by the Chinese government in 1958 and revised several times. The International Organization for Standardization adopted pinyin as a standard in 1982. The system was adopted as the standard in Taiwan in 2009. The word Hànyǔ means the language of the Han people. In 1605, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci published Xizi Qiji in Beijing and this was the first book to use the Roman alphabet to write the Chinese language. Twenty years later, another Jesuit in China, Nicolas Trigault, neither book had much immediate impact on the way in which Chinese thought about their writing system, and the romanizations they described were intended more for Westerners than for the Chinese. One of the earliest Chinese thinkers to relate Western alphabets to Chinese was late Ming to early Qing Dynasty scholar-official, the first late Qing reformer to propose that China adopt a system of spelling was Song Shu. A student of the great scholars Yu Yue and Zhang Taiyan, Song had been to Japan and observed the effect of the kana syllabaries. This galvanized him into activity on a number of fronts, one of the most important being reform of the script, while Song did not himself actually create a system for spelling Sinitic languages, his discussion proved fertile and led to a proliferation of schemes for phonetic scripts. The Wade–Giles system was produced by Thomas Wade in 1859, and it was popular and used in English-language publications outside China until 1979. This Sin Wenz or New Writing was much more sophisticated than earlier alphabets. In 1940, several members attended a Border Region Sin Wenz Society convention. Mao Zedong and Zhu De, head of the army, both contributed their calligraphy for the masthead of the Sin Wenz Societys new journal. Outside the CCP, other prominent supporters included Sun Yat-sens son, Sun Fo, Cai Yuanpei, the countrys most prestigious educator, Tao Xingzhi, an educational reformer. Over thirty journals soon appeared written in Sin Wenz, plus large numbers of translations, biographies, some contemporary Chinese literature, and a spectrum of textbooks

20.
Cantonese
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Cantonese, or Standard Cantonese, is a variety of Chinese spoken in the city of Guangzhou in southeastern China. It is the prestige variety of Yue, one of the major subdivisions of Chinese. In mainland China, it is the lingua franca of the province of Guangdong and some neighbouring areas such as Guangxi. In Hong Kong and Macau, Cantonese serves as one of their official languages and it is also spoken amongst overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia and throughout the Western World. When Cantonese and the closely related Yuehai dialects are classified together, Cantonese is viewed as vital part of the cultural identity for its native speakers across large swathes of southeastern China, Hong Kong and Macau. Although Cantonese shares some vocabulary with Mandarin, the two varieties are mutually unintelligible because of differences in pronunciation, grammar and lexicon, sentence structure, in particular the placement of verbs, sometimes differs between the two varieties. This results in the situation in which a Cantonese and a Mandarin text may look similar, in English, the term Cantonese is ambiguous. Cantonese proper is the variety native to the city of Canton and this narrow sense may be specified as Canton language or Guangzhou language in English. However, Cantonese may also refer to the branch of Cantonese that contains Cantonese proper as well as Taishanese and Gaoyang. In this article, Cantonese is used for Cantonese proper, historically, speakers called this variety Canton speech or Guangzhou speech, although this term is now seldom used outside mainland China. In Guangdong province, people call it provincial capital speech or plain speech. In Hong Kong and Macau, as well as among overseas Chinese communities, in mainland China, the term Guangdong speech is also increasingly being used among both native and non-native speakers. Due to its status as a prestige dialect among all the dialects of the Cantonese or Yue branch of Chinese varieties, the official languages of Hong Kong are Chinese and English, as defined in the Hong Kong Basic Law. The Chinese language has different varieties, of which Cantonese is one. Given the traditional predominance of Cantonese within Hong Kong, it is the de facto official spoken form of the Chinese language used in the Hong Kong Government and all courts and it is also used as the medium of instruction in schools, alongside English. A similar situation exists in neighboring Macau, where Chinese is an official language along with Portuguese. As in Hong Kong, Cantonese is the predominant spoken variety of Chinese used in life and is thus the official form of Chinese used in the government. The variant spoken in Hong Kong and Macau is known as Hong Kong Cantonese, Cantonese first developed around the port city of Guangzhou in the Pearl River Delta region of southeastern China

21.
Jyutping
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Jyutping is a romanisation system for Cantonese developed by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong, an academic group, in 1993. Its formal name is The Linguistic Society of Hong Kong Cantonese Romanisation Scheme, the LSHK promotes the use of this romanisation system. The name Jyutping is a contraction consisting of the first Chinese characters of the terms Jyut6jyu5, only the finals m and ng can be used as standalone nasal syllables. ^ ^ ^ Referring to the pronunciation of these words. There are nine tones in six distinct tone contours in Cantonese, however, as three of the nine are entering tones, which only appear in syllables ending with p, t, and k, they do not have separate tone numbers in Jyutping. Jyutping and the Yale Romanisation of Cantonese represent Cantonese pronunciations with the letters in, The initials, b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, ng, h, s, gw, kw. The vowel, aa, a, e, i, o, u, the coda, i, u, m, n, ng, p, t, k. But they differ in the following, The vowels eo and oe represent /ɵ/ and /œː/ respectively in Jyutping, the initial j represents /j/ in Jyutping whereas y is used instead in Yale. The initial z represents /ts/ in Jyutping whereas j is used instead in Yale, the initial c represents /tsʰ/ in Jyutping whereas ch is used instead in Yale. In Jyutping, if no consonant precedes the vowel yu, then the initial j is appended before the vowel, in Yale, the corresponding initial y is never appended before yu under any circumstances. Jyutping defines three finals not in Yale, eu /ɛːu/, em /ɛːm/, and ep /ɛːp/ and these three finals are used in colloquial Cantonese words, such as deu6, lem2, and gep6. To represent tones, only tone numbers are used in Jyutping whereas Yale traditionally uses tone marks together with the letter h. Jyutping and Cantonese Pinyin represent Cantonese pronunciations with the letters in, The initials, b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, ng, h, s, gw, kw. The vowel, aa, a, e, i, o, u, the coda, i, u, m, n, ng, p, t, k. But they have differences, The vowel oe represents both /ɵ/ and /œː/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas eo and oe represent /ɵ/ and /œː/ respectively in Jyutping. The vowel y represents /y/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas both yu and i are used in Jyutping, the initial dz represents /ts/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas z is used instead in Jyutping. The initial ts represents /tsʰ/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas c is used instead in Jyutping. To represent tones, the numbers 1 to 9 are usually used in Cantonese Pinyin, however, only the numbers 1 to 6 are used in Jyutping

22.
China
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China, officially the Peoples Republic of China, is a unitary sovereign state in East Asia and the worlds most populous country, with a population of over 1.381 billion. The state is governed by the Communist Party of China and its capital is Beijing, the countrys major urban areas include Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Hong Kong. China is a power and a major regional power within Asia. Chinas landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from forest steppes, the Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from much of South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third and sixth longest in the world, respectively, Chinas coastline along the Pacific Ocean is 14,500 kilometers long and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East China and South China seas. China emerged as one of the worlds earliest civilizations in the basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. For millennia, Chinas political system was based on hereditary monarchies known as dynasties, in 1912, the Republic of China replaced the last dynasty and ruled the Chinese mainland until 1949, when it was defeated by the communist Peoples Liberation Army in the Chinese Civil War. The Communist Party established the Peoples Republic of China in Beijing on 1 October 1949, both the ROC and PRC continue to claim to be the legitimate government of all China, though the latter has more recognition in the world and controls more territory. China had the largest economy in the world for much of the last two years, during which it has seen cycles of prosperity and decline. Since the introduction of reforms in 1978, China has become one of the worlds fastest-growing major economies. As of 2016, it is the worlds second-largest economy by nominal GDP, China is also the worlds largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. China is a nuclear weapons state and has the worlds largest standing army. The PRC is a member of the United Nations, as it replaced the ROC as a permanent member of the U. N. Security Council in 1971. China is also a member of numerous formal and informal multilateral organizations, including the WTO, APEC, BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BCIM, the English name China is first attested in Richard Edens 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa. The demonym, that is, the name for the people, Portuguese China is thought to derive from Persian Chīn, and perhaps ultimately from Sanskrit Cīna. Cīna was first used in early Hindu scripture, including the Mahābhārata, there are, however, other suggestions for the derivation of China. The official name of the state is the Peoples Republic of China. The shorter form is China Zhōngguó, from zhōng and guó and it was then applied to the area around Luoyi during the Eastern Zhou and then to Chinas Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the Qing

23.
Communist Party of China
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The Communist Party of China is the founding and ruling political party of the Peoples Republic of China. It was founded in 1921, chiefly by Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao, the CPC is currently the worlds second largest political party with a membership of 88.76 million as of 2016. It also controls the worlds largest armed force, the Peoples Liberation Army, the highest body of the CPC is the National Congress, convened every fifth year. The partys leader holds the offices of General Secretary, Chairman of the Central Military Commission, through these posts the party leader is the countrys paramount leader. The current party leader is Xi Jinping, elected at the 18th National Congress, the CPC is still committed to communist thought and continues to participate in the International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties each year. The official explanation for Chinas economic reforms is that the country is in the stage of socialism. The planned economy established under Mao Zedong was replaced by the socialist market economy, the CPC has its origins in the May Fourth Movement of 1919, during which radical ideologies like Marxism and anarchism gained traction among Chinese intellectuals. Other influences stemming from the Bolshevik revolution and Marxist theory inspired the Communist Party of China, Li Dazhao was the first leading Chinese intellectual who publicly supported Leninism and world revolution. In contrast to Chen Duxiu, Li did not renounce participation in the affairs of the Republic of China, both of them regarded the October Revolution in Russia as groundbreaking, believing it to herald a new era for oppressed countries everywhere. The CPC was modeled on Vladimir Lenins theory of a vanguard party, Study circles were, according to Cai Hesen, the rudiments. Several study circles were established during the New Culture Movement, the founding National Congress of the CPC was held on 23–31 July 1921. With only 50 members in the beginning of 1921, the CPC organization, while it was originally planned to be held in Shanghai French Concession, police officers interrupted the meeting on 3 July. Because of that, the congress was moved to a tourist boat on South Lake in Jiaxing, Zhejiang province, only 12 delegates attended the congress, with neither Li nor Chen being able to attend. Chen sent a representative to attend the congress. The resolutions of the called for the establishment of a communist party. The communists dominated the left wing of the KMT, a party organized on Leninist lines, when KMT leader Sun Yat-sen died in March 1925, he was succeeded by a rightist, Chiang Kai-shek, who initiated moves to marginalize the position of the communists. Fresh from the success of the Northern Expedition to overthrow the warlords, Chiang Kai-shek turned on the communists, ignoring the orders of the Wuhan-based KMT government, he marched on Shanghai, a city controlled by communist militias. Although the communists welcomed Chiangs arrival, he turned on them, Chiangs army then marched on Wuhan, but was prevented from taking the city by CPC General Ye Ting and his troops

24.
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
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Stockholm International Peace Research Institute is an international institute based in Sweden, dedicated to research into conflict, armaments, arms control and disarmament. Established in 1966, SIPRI provides data, analysis and recommendations, based on sources, to policymakers, researchers, media. In 1964, Prime Minister of Sweden Tage Erlander put forward the idea of establishing a research institute to commemorate Swedens 150 years of unbroken peace. A Swedish Royal Commission chaired by Ambassador Alva Myrdal proposed in its 1966 report to establish an institute, later named the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the Swedish Riksdag decided that the Institute be established on 1 July 1966 with the legal status of an independent foundation. All SIPRI research is based exclusively on open sources, SIPRIs organisation consists of a Governing Board, Director, Deputy Director, Research Staff Collegium and support staff. An Advisory Committee serves as a body to the Institute. The Governing Board takes decisions on important matters concerning the research agenda, activities, organisation, other matters are decided by the Director. The Research Staff Collegium advises the Director on research matters, the staff of about 50 persons is international. The researchers are recruited for a specific period and represent various academic disciplines. Located in Sweden, the Institute offers a platform for researchers from different countries to work in close cooperation. The Institute also hosts guest researchers who work on issues related to the SIPRI research programme, although SIPRI is not a teaching institute, it receives interns whose programmes of study can contribute to and benefit from SIPRIs research. Contacts are maintained with other centres and individual researchers throughout the world. Frequent contacts are maintained with diplomatic missions in Stockholm and with Swedish research centres, Dr Bates Gill served as SIPRI Director from 2007–2012. In September 2012, the Swedish Government appointed the German economist Tilman Brück as his successor, Brück held the position of SIPRI Director from January 2013 to June 2014. In June 2014 the SIPRI Governing Board appointed Dr Ian Anthony as Director for an interim period, the current Director, Dan Smith, was appointed in September 2015. SIPRIs current Deputy Director is Jakob Hallgren, among these the biggest are the Stockholm Forum on Peace and Security and the Stockholm Security Conference. SIPRIs publications and information material are distributed to a range of policy makers, researchers, journalists, organisations. The results of the research are disseminated through the publication of books and reports by SIPRI and commissioned authors as well as through symposia, the Institute has forged its profile by concentrating on present-day realities, providing unbiased facts to states and individuals

25.
United States Department of Defense
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The Department is the largest employer in the world, with nearly 1.3 million active duty servicemen and women as of 2016. Adding to its employees are over 801,000 National Guardsmen and Reservists from the four services and it is headquartered at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, just outside of Washington, D. C. The Department of Defense is headed by the Secretary of Defense, Military operations are managed by nine regional or functional Unified Combatant Commands. The Department of Defense also operates several joint services schools, including the National Defense University, the history of the defense of the United States started with the Continental Congress in 1775. The creation of the United States Army was enacted on 14 June 1775 and this coincides with the American holiday Flag Day. The Second Continental Congress would charter the United States Navy, on 13 October 1775, today, both the Navy and the Marine Corps are separate military services subordinate to the Department of the Navy. The Preamble of the United States Constitution gave the authority to federal government, to defend its citizens and this first Congress had a huge agenda, that of creating legislation to build a government for the ages. Legislation to create a military defense force stagnated, two separate times, President George Washington went to Congress to remind them of their duty to establish a military. In a special message to Congress on 19 December 1945, the President cited both wasteful military spending and inter-departmental conflicts, deliberations in Congress went on for months focusing heavily on the role of the military in society and the threat of granting too much military power to the executive. The act placed the National Military Establishment under the control of a single Secretary of Defense, the National Military Establishment formally began operations on 18 September, the day after the Senate confirmed James V. Forrestal as the first Secretary of Defense. The National Military Establishment was renamed the Department of Defense on 10 August 1949, under the Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1958, channels of authority within the department were streamlined, while still maintaining the authority of the Military Departments. Also provided in this legislation was a centralized authority, the Advanced Research Projects Agency. The Act moved decision-making authority from the Military Departments to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and it also strengthened the command channel of the military over U. S. forces from the President to the Secretary of Defense. Written and promoted by the Eisenhower administration, it was signed into law 6 August 1958, because the Constitution vests all military authority in Congress and the President, the statutory authority of the Secretary of Defense is derived from their constitutional authorities. Department of Defense Directive 5100.01 describes the relationships within the Department. The latest version, signed by former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in December 2010, is the first major re-write since 1987, the Office of the Secretary of Defense is the Secretary and Deputy Secretarys civilian staff. S. Government departments and agencies, foreign governments, and international organizations, OSD also performs oversight and management of the Defense Agencies and Department of Defense Field Activities. OSD also supervises the following Defense Agencies, Several defense agencies are members of the United States Intelligence Community and these are national-level intelligence services that operate under the jurisdiction of the Department of Defense but simultaneously fall under the authorities of the Director of National Intelligence

26.
General Secretary of the Communist Party of China
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The officeholder is usually considered the paramount leader of China. According to the Constitution, the General Secretary serves as an ex member of the Politburo Standing Committee. The current General Secretary is Xi Jinping, who took office on 15 November 2012, as China is a de facto one-party state, the General Secretary holds ultimate power and authority over state and government. However, the men who have held the post have held far less power than Chairman Mao Zedong, since the mid-1990s, the General Secretary has traditionally also held the post of President of the PRC. While the presidency is nominally a ceremonial post, it is customary for the General Secretary to assume the presidency to confirm his status as de jure head of state. These bodies were tasked with establishing the general direction for national security as well as the agenda for economic reform. Both groups are headed by the General Secretary, that the power of the General Secretary has become more concentrated

27.
Chinese characters
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Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and some other Asian languages. In Standard Chinese, and sometimes also in English, they are called hànzì. They have been adapted to write a number of languages including, Japanese, where they are known as kanji, Korean, where they are known as hanja. Collectively, they are known as CJK characters, in English, they are sometimes called Han characters. Chinese characters constitute the oldest continuously used system of writing in the world, Chinese characters number in the tens of thousands, though most of them are minor graphic variants encountered only in historical texts. Studies in China have shown that literacy in written Chinese requires a knowledge of between three and four thousand characters. In Japan,2,136 are taught through secondary school, the characters used in Japan are distinct from those used in China in many respects. There are various national standard lists of characters, forms, in South Korea, when Chinese characters are used they are of the traditional variant and are almost identical to those used in places like Taiwan and Hong Kong. In Old Chinese, most words were monosyllabic and there was a correspondence between characters and words. Rather, a character almost always corresponds to a syllable that is also a morpheme. However, there are a few exceptions to this correspondence, including bisyllabic morphemes. Modern Chinese has many homophones, thus the same syllable may be represented by many characters. A single character may also have a range of meanings, or sometimes quite distinct meanings, cognates in the several varieties of Chinese are generally written with the same character. They typically have similar meanings, but often quite different pronunciations and these foreign adaptations of Chinese pronunciation are known as Sino-Xenic pronunciations, and have been useful in the reconstruction of Middle Chinese. When the script was first used in the late 2nd millennium BC, words of Old Chinese were generally monosyllabic, increasing numbers of polysyllabic words have entered the language from the Western Zhou period to the present day. The process has accelerated over the centuries as phonetic change has increased the number of homophones and it has been estimated that over two thirds of the 3,000 most common words in modern Standard Chinese are polysyllables, the vast majority of those being disyllables. The most common process has been to form compounds of existing words, words have also been created by adding affixes, reduplication and borrowing from other languages. Polysyllabic words are written with one character per syllable

28.
Civilian control of the military
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The reverse situation, where professional military officers control national politics, is called a military dictatorship. A lack of control over the military may result in a state within a state, Civilian control is often seen as a prerequisite feature of a stable liberal democracy. One example is the Peoples Republic of China, as noted by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor Richard H. Kohn, civilian control is not a fact but a process. Advocates of civilian control generally take a Clausewitzian view of war, the words of Georges Clemenceau, War is too serious a matter to entrust to military men, wryly reflect this view. The military serves as a government agency, which is supposed to implement, rather than formulate. Kohn succinctly summarizes this view when he writes that, The point of control is to make security subordinate to the larger purposes of a nation. The purpose of the military is to defend society, not to define it, a states effective use of force is an issue of great concern for all national leaders, who must rely on the military to supply this aspect of their authority. This poses the paradox that because we fear others we create an institution of violence to protect us, the military is authoritative, hierarchical, dont require much discussion and no dissention. Many of the Founding Fathers of the United States were suspicious of standing militaries. As Samuel Adams wrote in 1768, Even when there is a necessity of the power, within a land. In his principal argument for the ratification of the proposed constitution, using the European experience as a negative example and the British experience as a positive one, he presented the idea of a strong nation protected by a navy with no need of a standing army. The implication was that control of a military force is, at best, difficult and expensive. He foresaw the necessity of creating a government that kept the military at a distance. Constant apprehension of War, has the tendency to render the head too large for the body. A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive, will not long be safe companions to liberty, the means of defense against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people. The United States Constitution placed considerable limitations on the legislature, hamilton argued in Federalist No.26 that it would be equally as bad for a legislature to be unfettered by any other agency and that restraints would actually be more likely to preserve liberty. 47, continued Hamilton’s argument that distributing powers among the branches of government would prevent any one group from gaining so much power as to become unassailable

29.
Commander-in-chief
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A commander-in-chief is the person or body that exercises supreme operational command and control of a nations military forces or significant elements of those forces. In the latter case, the element is those forces within a particular region. Often, a given countrys commander-in-chief need not be or have been an officer or even a veteran. This follows the principle of civilian control of the military, the role of commander-in-chief derives from the Latin, imperator. Imperatores of the Roman Republic and Roman Empire possessed imperium powers, in its modern use, the term first applied to King Charles I of England in 1639. It continued to be used during the English Civil War, a nations head of state usually holds the nominal position of commander-in-chief, even if effective executive power is held by a separate head of government. Governors-general and colonial governors are also often appointed commander-in-chief of the forces within their territory. A commander-in-chief is sometimes referred to as commander, which is sometimes used as a specific term. The term is used for military officers who hold such power and authority, not always through dictatorship. The term is used for officers who hold authority over an individual military branch. According to the Constitution of Albania, The President of the Republic of Albania is the Commander-in-chief of Albanian Armed Forces, the incumbent Commander-in-chief is President Bujar Nishani. The Ministry of Defense is the government department that assists and serves the President in the management of the armed forces, the Minister for Defence and several subordinate ministers exercise this control through the Australian Defence Organisation. The Constitution states, in Article 80, that the President is the Commander-in-Chief of the Federal Armed Forces. e, the cabinet under the chairmanship of the Federal Chancellor, as defined in Article 69. The commander-in-chief is the president, although executive power and responsibility for national defense resides with the prime minister and he retired on 7 April 1972 and relinquished all authority and duties to the President of Bangladesh. Article 142 of the Brazilian Constitution of 1988 states that the Brazilian Armed Forces is under the command of the President of the Republic. The Sultan of Brunei is the Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Brunei Armed Forces, the powers of command-in-chief over the Canadian Armed Forces are vested in the Canadian monarch, and are delegated to the Governor General of Canada, who also uses the title Commander-in-Chief. In this capacity, the general is entitled to the uniform of a general/flag officer, with the crest of the office. According to the National Defence Act, the Minister of National Defence is responsible and accountable to parliament for all related to national defence

30.
State Council of the People's Republic of China
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The State Council, constitutionally synonymous with the Central Peoples Government since 1954, is the chief administrative authority of the Peoples Republic of China. It is chaired by the Premier and includes the heads of each governmental department, currently, the council has 35 members, the premier, one executive vice premier, three other vice premiers, five state councilors, and 25 additional ministers and chairs of major agencies. The State Council directly oversees the various subordinate Peoples Governments in the provinces, the State Council meets once every six months. Between meetings it is guided by a Standing Committee that meets weekly, the standing committee includes the premier, one executive vice premier, three vice premiers, and five other state councilors. The vice-premiers and state councilors are nominated by the premier, incumbents may serve two successive five-year terms. Each vice premier oversees certain areas of administration, each State Councilor performs duties as designated by the Premier. The secretary-general heads the General Office which handles the work of the State Council. The secretary-general has relatively little power and should not be confused with the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, commissions outrank ministries and set policies for and coordinate the related activities of different administrative organs. Offices deal with matters of ongoing concern, bureaus and administrations rank below ministries. In addition to the 25 ministries, there are 38 centrally administered government organizations that directly to the state council. The heads of these organizations attend full meetings of the committee on an irregular basis. The State Council and the Communist Party of China are also tightly interlocked, with rare exceptions, State Councilors are high-ranking members of the CPC. Although, as Party members, they are supposed to follow Party instructions and this results in a system which is unlike the Soviet practice in which the Party effectively controlled the State. Rather, the Party and State are fused at this level of government, the State Council is the functional center of state power and clearinghouse for government initiatives at all levels. With the governments emphasis on modernization, the State Council clearly acquired additional importance and influence. The State Council controls the Ministry for National Defense but does not control the Peoples Liberation Army, which is instead controlled by the Central Military Commission. e

31.
Economic development
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Economic development is the process by which a nation improves the economic, political, and social well-being of its people. The term has been used frequently by economists, politicians, and others in the 20th, the concept, however, has been in existence in the West for centuries. Modernization, Westernization, and especially Industrialization are other people have used while discussing economic development. Economic development has a relationship with the environment and environmental issues. Whereas economic development is a policy intervention endeavor with aims of economic and social well-being of people, economic growth is a phenomenon of market productivity, consequently, as economist Amartya Sen points out, economic growth is one aspect of the process of economic development. The scope of development includes the process and policies by which a nation improves the economic, political. The University of Iowas Center for International Finance and Development states that, Economic development is a term that economists, politicians, the concept, however, has been in existence in the West for centuries. Modernization, Westernisation, and especially Industrialisation are other people have used while discussing economic development. Economic development has a relationship with the environment. Although nobody is certain when the concept originated, some agree that development is closely bound up with the evolution of capitalism. Economic development can also be considered as a theory that documents the state of an economy at a certain time. According to Schumpeter and Backhaus, the changes in equilibrium state to document in economic theory can only be caused by intervening factors coming from the outside. Economic development originated in the period of reconstruction initiated by the United States. Their food is inadequate, they are victims of disease and their economic life is primitive and stagnant. Their poverty is a handicap and a both to them and to more prosperous areas. For the first time in history humanity possesses the knowledge and the skill to relieve the suffering of these people, greater production is the key to prosperity and peace. And the key to production is a wider and more vigorous application of modem scientific. There have been several phases of development theory since 1945

32.
Emergency management
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Disaster management is the creation of plans through which communities reduce vulnerability to hazards and cope with disasters. Disaster management does not avert or eliminate the threats, instead, failure to create a plan could lead to human mortality, lost revenue, and damage to assets. Events covered by disaster management include acts of terrorism, industrial sabotage, fire, natural disasters, public disorder, industrial accidents, and communication failures. If possible, emergency planning should aim to prevent emergencies from occurring, as time goes on, and more data becomes available, usually through the study of emergencies as they occur, a plan should evolve. There are very few Emergency Management specific standards, and emergency management as a discipline tends to fall under business resilience standards. In order to avoid, or reduce significant losses to a business, emergency managers should work to identify and anticipate potential risks, hopefully to reduce their probability of occurring. It is essential for an organisation to include procedures for determining whether a situation has occurred. An emergency plan must be maintained, in a structured and methodical manner. Emergency managers generally follow a process to anticipate, assess, prevent, prepare, respond. Emergency management plans and procedures should include the identification of appropriately trained staff members responsible for decision-making when an emergency occurs, Training plans should include internal people, contractors and civil protection partners, and should state the nature and frequency of training and testing. Testing of a plans effectiveness should occur regularly, in instances where several business or organisations occupy the same space, joint emergency plans, formally agreed to by all parties, should be put into place. Communication is one of the key issues during any emergency, pre-planning of communications is critical, miscommunication can easily result in emergency events escalating unnecessarily. Once an emergency has been identified a comprehensive assessment evaluating the level of impact, following assessment, the appropriate plan or response to be activated will depend on a specific pre-set criteria within the emergency plan. The steps necessary should be prioritized to ensure critical functions are operational as soon as possible, the critical functions are those that makes the plan untenable if not operationalized. The Communication policy must be known and rehearsed and all targeted audiences or publics. All Communication infrastructure must be as prepared as possible with all information on groupings clearly identified, Emergency management consists of five phases, prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery. Http, //www. fema. gov/mission-areas It focuses on preventing the human hazard, preventive measures are taken on both the domestic and international levels, designed to provide permanent protection from disasters. Not all disasters, particularly natural disasters, can be prevented, in January 2005,167 Governments adopted a 10-year global plan for natural disaster risk reduction called the Hyogo Framework

33.
Officer (armed forces)
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An officer is a member of an armed force or uniformed service who holds a position of authority. In this sense, officers are not enlisted, but hold appointments from their government that typically remain in force indefinitely unless resigned, the proportion of officers varies greatly. Officers typically make up between an eighth and a fifth of modern armed forces personnel, in 2013, officers were the senior 17% of the British armed forces, and the senior 13. 7% of the French armed forces. In 2012, officers made up about 18% of the German armed forces, historically, however, armed forces have generally had much lower proportions of officers. During the First World War, fewer than 5% of British soldiers were officers, in the early twentieth century, the Spanish army had the highest proportion of officers of any European army, at 12. 5%. Within a nations armed forces, armies tend to have a proportion of officers. For example,13. 9% of British army personnel and 22. 2% of the RAF personnel were officers in 2013, having officers is one requirement for combatant status under the laws of war, though these officers need not have obtained an official commission or warrant. Commissioned officers are typically the only persons, in an armed forces environment, a superior officer is an officer with a higher rank than another officer, who is a subordinate officer relative to the superior. Non-commissioned officers in positions of authority can be said to have control or charge rather than command per se, many advanced militaries require university degrees as a prerequisite for commissioning, even from the enlisted ranks. In the Israel Defense Forces, a university degree is a requirement for an officer to advance to the rank of lieutenant colonel, the IDF often sponsors the studies for its majors, while aircrew and naval officers obtain academic degrees as a part of their training programmes. In the United Kingdom, there are three routes of entry for British Armed Forces officers, the first, and primary route are those who receive their commission directly into the officer grades following completion at their relevant military academy. The third route is similar to the second, in that they convert from an enlisted to a commission, but these are taken from the highest ranks of SNCOs. LE officers, whilst holding the same Queens Commission, generally work in different roles from the DE officers, in the infantry, a number of Warrant Officer Class 1s are commissioned as LE officers. For Royal Navy and Royal Air Force officer candidates, a 30-week period at Britannia Royal Naval College or a 30-week period at RAF College Cranwell, Royal Marines officers receive their training in the Command Wing of the Commando Training Centre Royal Marines during a grueling 15-month course. The courses consist of not only tactical and combat training, but also leadership, management, etiquette, until the Cardwell Reforms of 1871, commissions in the British Army were purchased by officers. The Royal Navy, however, operated on a more meritocratic, or at least socially mobile, AOCS also also included the embedded Aviation Reserve Officer Candidate and Naval Aviation Cadet programs. NAVCADs were personnel who held associates degrees, but lacked bachelors degrees, nAVCADs would complete the entire AOCS program, but would not be commissioned until completion of flight training and receiving their wings. After their initial tour, they would be assigned to a college or university full-time for no more than two years in order to complete their bachelors degree

34.
Military technology
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Military technology is the application of technology for use in warfare. Military technology is researched and developed by scientists and engineers specifically for use in battle by the armed forces. Many new technologies came as a result of the funding of science. Weapons engineering is the design, development, testing and lifecycle management of military weapons and this section is divided into the broad cultural developments that affected military technology. The first use of tools may have begun during the Paleolithic Period. The earliest stone tools are from the site of Lomekwi, Turkana, stone tools diversified through the Pleistocene Period, which ended ~12,000 years ago. Humans entered the Bronze Age as they learned to smelt copper into an alloy with tin to make weapons, in Asia where copper-tin ores are rare, this development was delayed until trading in bronze began in the third millennium BCE. In the Middle East and Southern European regions, the Bronze Age follows the Neolithic period, but in parts of the world. The first large use of iron type weapons began in Asia Minor around the 14th century BCE and in Central Europe around the 11th century BCE followed by the Middle East and India. The Assyrians are credited with the introduction of cavalry in warfare. Assyrians were also the first to use iron-tipped arrows, the book covers topics of military strategy, training, and the production and employment of advanced weaponry. Advances in military technology aided the Song dynasty in its defense against hostile neighbors to the north, the flamethrower found its origins in Byzantine-era Greece, employing Greek fire in a device with a siphon hose by the 7th century. The earliest reference to Greek Fire in China was made in 917, written by Wu Renchen in his Spring, lin Yu mentioned also that the fierce fire oil derived ultimately from one of Chinas maritime contacts in the southern seas, Arabia Dashiguo. The Chinese applied the use of bellows to pump petrol out of a single cylinder. This device was featured in description and illustration of the Wujing Zongyao military manuscript of 1044, in the suppression of the Southern Tang state by 976, early Song naval forces confronted them on the Yangtze River in 975. Southern Tang forces attempted to use flamethrowers against the Song navy, the first art depiction of the Chinese fire lance was from a Buddhist mural painting of Dunhuang, dated circa 950. Eventually, perishable bamboo was replaced with hollow tubes of cast iron, the earliest known depiction of a gun is a sculpture from a cave in Sichuan, dating to 1128, that portrays a figure carrying a vase-shaped bombard, firing flames and a cannonball. However, the oldest existent archaeological discovery of a metal barrel handgun is from the Chinese Heilongjiang excavation, the Chinese also discovered the explosive potential of packing hollowed cannonball shells with gunpowder

35.
Combined arms
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Combined arms is an approach to warfare which seeks to integrate different combat arms of a military to achieve mutually complementary effects. The mixing of arms is sometimes pushed down below the level where homogeneity ordinarily prevails, combined arms operations dates back to antiquity, where armies would usually field a screen of skirmishers to protect their spearmen during the approach to contact. Especially in the case of the Greek hoplites however, the focus of military thinking lay almost exclusively on the heavy infantry. Philip II of Macedon greatly improved upon the combined arms tactics of the Greek city-states and combined the newly created Macedonian Phalanx with heavy cavalry. The Phalanx would hold the line in place, until the heavy cavalry could smash. The pre-Marian Roman Legion was a combined force and consisted of five classes of troops. Lightly equipped velites acted as skirmishers armed with light javelins, the fifth class were the equites, the cavalry, used for scouting, pursuit and to guard the flanks. The army of the Han Dynasty is also an example, fielding mêlée infantry, crossbowmen, civilizations such as the Carthaginians and Sassanids also were known to have fielded a combination of infantry supported by powerful cavalry. At the Battle of Hastings English infantry fighting from behind a wall were defeated by a Norman army consisting of archers, infantry. One of the used by the Normans was to tempt the English to leave the shield wall to attack retreating Norman infantry only to destroy them in the open with cavalry. Both Hastings and Falkirk showed how combined arms could be used to defeat enemies relying on one arm. The lightly protected longbowmen could down their French opponents at a distance and this is the crux of combined arms, to allow a combination of forces to achieve what would be impossible for its constituent elements to do alone. During the Middle Ages military forces used combined arms as a method of winning battles, some historians claim that during the Middle Ages there was no strategic or tactical art to military combat. Kelly DeVries uses the Merriam-Webster definition of combat “as a general military engagement. ”In the pursuit of a leaders goals and self-interest tactical and strategic thinking was used along with taking advantage of the terrain and weather in choosing when and where to give battle. The simplest example is the combination of different specialties such as archers, infantry, cavalry, at times, each force fought on its own and won or lost depending on the opposing military competence. During the Middle Ages leaders utilized a combination of skilled and unskilled forces to win battles. An army that has multiple skills available can engage a force that is comprised mainly of one or two types of troops. Each type of military formation –infantry, archers, cavalry, or peasant –has certain advantages that the other does not have

36.
Theater (warfare)
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In warfare, a theater or theatre is an area or place in which important military events occur or are progressing. A theater can include the entirety of the air space, land, such a clearly defined idea as this is not capable of universal application, it is here used merely to indicate the line of distinction. Theater of operations is a sub-area within a theater of war, the boundary of a TO is defined by the commander who is orchestrating or providing support for specific combat operations within the TO. Theater of operations are divided into strategic directions or military regions depending whether its a war or peace time, the United States Armed Forces split into Unified Combatant Commands that are assigned to a particular theater of military operations. Strategic direction is a group of armies also known as task forces or battlegroups, also in the US Armed Forces the term of strategic is often associated with missile command dropping word missile out of use such as the United States Strategic Command. However it is an important strategic command that could be deployed in any theater of military operations. A strategic command or direction in general essence would combine a number of military formations or operational command. In modern military, a command is better known as a combat command that may be a combination of army groups. In a peacetime due to loss of a strategic direction fronts were transformed into military regions responsible for a section of operations. The Russian term is театр военных действий, teatr voennykh deistvii, abbreviated ТВД, as the armies advanced, both these zones and the areas into which they were divided would shift forward to new geographic areas of control

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Military service
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Military service is service by an individual or group in an army or other militia, whether as a chosen job or as a result of an involuntary draft. Some nations require an amount of military service from every citizen. A nation with a volunteer military does not normally require mandatory military service from its citizens. In this summary,195 countries are included, Compulsory military service has declined considerably since 1970. Albanias armed forces announced an objective to create an army by the end of 2010. Argentina suspended military conscription in 1995 and replaced it with a military service. It should be noted that military conscription has not been abolished, Conscription was known in Argentina as la colimba. Conscripts themselves were known and referred to as colimbas, voluntary service in the Boer War was initially from a number of the separate colonies before federation in 1901 and later volunteers were deployed as an Australian force. Two conscription referendums were defeated during World War 1, Military service during WW1 was voluntary as was service in WW2. The Vietnam War was lost on 1 May 1975 over three years after the ADF withdrew in late 1971, all forms of conscription were abolished by the Whitlam Government in later 1972. The country has set the age for voluntary recruitment into the Barbados Defence Force at 18. Younger recruits may be conscripted with parental consent, belgium suspended conscription on 31 December 1992 by amending the 1962 Law on Conscription, which became applicable only to conscripts drafted in 1993 and earlier. In practice this meant that the law no longer applied to those born in 1975, since 1 March 1995 the Belgian armed forces consist of professional volunteers only. Belize has set minimum age for recruitment into the Armed Forces at 18. Conscription has never been prescribed in the Defense Act, but is at the Governor General’s discretion, bosnia and Herzegovina abolished compulsory military service as of 1 January 2007. The last conscripts were sent home on 25 November 2007, previously there was mandatory military service for male citizens from eighteen to twenty-seven years of age. Duration of the depended on the degree of education. For citizens studying for or holding a degree or higher the service was six months

Newly commissioned U.S. Navy and Marine Corps officers celebrate their new positions by throwing their midshipmen covers into the air as part of the U.S. Naval Academy class of 2005 graduation and commissioning ceremony.